Shai Agassi Raises $200 Million for Ambitious Electric Car Project

Shai Agassi, known for being a pioneer and a visionary in the world of software, is making an adventurous move into an old, stubborn world: the world of auto manufacturing. No, he’s not trying to create the next Saturn or (heaven forbid) Daewoo. He’s putting his visionary nature into both capitalism and environmentalism. He’s trying to start an electric car company like nobody has tried to do it before.

The critics will say he’s crazy, but he really may be onto something here. He’s taking a much different approach. All electric cars up to this point have involved the car being a self contained unit in the sense that it carries its batteries and recharges at home. Agassi’s vision is that the batteries will be entirely separate from the cars – the way gasoline is separate from the cars we’re driving today.

The company would set up service stations across the country where electric car owners could exchange their dead batteries for new ones, and a wireless communication network would let the driver know where the nearest battery outlet is. Innovative indeed.

This project will seem far-fetched, but at least it’s not going to be underfunded. Agassi has already raised $200 Million. Not a bad little pile of seed capital.

I only have one question about any project that involves electric cars – what about the environmental impact of generating the electricity to power the cars. Won’t that still involve coal-fired power plants and carbon emissions? Is their a big net reduction in the environmental impact or are we just shifting things around?