21st Century Regenerative Technology

1. Google Adds Auto Industry to Its List of Revolutions
2. Shai Agassi on How to Electrify America's Cars

Google Adds Auto Industry to Its List of Revolutions

2008-06-13 22:23

Craig Rubens - Big Green

Google’s conference this week on plug-in electric vehicles and related federal policy clearly positions the search company’s RechargeIT program as an EV incubator for startups, R&D initiatives and policy discussions. Dan Reicher, Google.org’s director of climate change and energy initiatives, opened the conference, which was heavily attended by beltway insiders, by announcing that Google would invest in multiple ventures to make wide-scale plug-in electric cars viable.

The move is almost as bold as Google’s R E Less Than C initiative, which calls for spending hundreds of millions of dollars on renewable energy projects and startups. With this week’s announcement, the search giant now adds transportation to the list of industries it will attempt to revolutionize.

Google certainly has the capital and innovative spirit to tackle such ambitious problems and they are working on building their cred on the Hill. The company only opened its Washington office in 2005, with one employee, but is now hobnobbing with senators and secretaries like the best of them, which it will need to do if it plans to take on the auto and energy lobbies.

The Plug-in Electric Vehicles 2008: What Role for Washington? conference, co-hosted by the Brookings Institute, was an opportunity for big auto makers, policy makers, advocacy groups and startups alike to mingle and discuss the automotive future, all for Google’s observation. Google knows it has a lot to learn about this sector before it commits too much capital.

Valleywag puts the Gawker take on it saying: “[E]veryone really needs to stop referring to Google.org as any sort of philanthropic enterprise, and call it what it is — a venture-investment subsidiary.” As Google tries to free its Internet business from wires, it is working increasingly hard to give all of our cars plugs and tie them to the grid.

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Shai Agassi on How to Electrify America's Cars

2008-06-13 18:03

Craig Rubens - Startups

Can Shai Agassi’s electric vehicle infrastructure startup Project Better Place tackle the U.S.? The well-funded startup has only done deals with small countries, but Agassi certainly thinks so (as does San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom). In this video interview that we shot at a plug-in vehicle conference, Agassi explains to us why he thinks the U.S. is a good fit for Project Better Place.

Agassi contends that the clustered populations on the west and east coasts make it easy for the company to effectively deploy battery swapping and charging stations. He also says that because so many Americans have second cars, there is basically “a range-extension mechanism built into the country.” That one long road trip outside of the electric vehicle’s range can be done by that second regular vehicle.

The conference where we chatted with Agassi was the Google.org/Brookings Institute’s on plug-in vehicles, which was held in Washington, D.C. this week. Agassi spoke on a panel there, and during the panel, we also got an indicator that Project Better Place might be working with lithium ion battery company A123Systems.

Update: Project Better Place Chief Marketing Officier Joe Paluska confirmed that A123 is working with Project Better Place for batteries, as well as AESC, a joint venture between Nissan and NEC. More on this later today.

Right before we filmed this interview Agassi had just been on a panel discussion with Dave Vieau, the CEO of A123Systems. Vieau made the comment that “We're getting the opportunity to work on some new cars,” and gestured toward Agassi. While NEC Corp. is working with Nissan to supply batteries for Project Better Place’s electric cars in Israel, perhaps Watertown, Mass.- based A123 is joining the company’s battery supplier list.