Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Electric Cars - My former boss at TED

To have feasible electric cars would do a whole lot of good. In several posts about issues of Global Warming on this blog it has been pointed out how important it is to minimize the CO2 output, but even those that are skeptic about Global Warming or about our impact on global warming, agree that the measure to which we become oil-independent, we improve the world politically and socially. Why all this is, has been said before. Let us look at the question how to achieve it. Specifically, how we can turn an entire country to electric cars.

In this TED Talk, Shai Agassi explains the workings of his company that aims to bring electric cars to the world, starting with Israel and also Denmark, Australia and California. He explains the approach to the technical issues of making an electric car economically attractive and to the political issue of adapting the infrastructure and of course to the companies and countries that have decided to team up with him.

Before I let you watch the video I have to tell that Shai Agassi is my former boss. Not only at SAP, but also at TopTier, the Israeli company that was bought by SAP and from which Agassi was CEO and he moved on to the executive board of SAP until he quit and took up the electric car project Better Place. I have come to know Agassi as a very charismatic motivational speaker. It was invigorating to work for him and I am very pleased he moved his formidable powers to a laudable goal such as oil-independence for Israel and the world.



More TED:
Elizabeth Gilbert,
Bill Gates,
Stephen Petranek,
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi,
Philip Zimbardo.

About Global Warming:
Climate engineering,
Lord Lawson and the Alarmists,
Hot, Flat and Crowded,
Waste Management,
The Stern Review.

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3 comments:

Gary Baumgarten said...

Rick Kasper, president of Chrysler GEM will be my guest on News Talk Online on Paltalk.com at 5:30 PM New York time on Tuesday April 21 to talk about the future of electric cars.

Please go to my blog at http://www.garybaumgarten.com to join the chatroom and talk to him.

Thanks,

Gary

(Please let me know if you'd like to host the chat on this blog as well).

Anonymous said...

Nice spitch. I put it on my blog if you don't mind.

Anne the Man said...

Please do, but maintain linkage to the original. Thanks in advance