20090531

A Better Place than Google Earth.

Looking for a poster child for the western world and whole earth future, if there's any to have ? Look no further, we have a friggin' winner right there.

Shai Agassi, founder of Better Place, is well on his way to put internal combustion engines and coal power plants where they belong: in museums.
All that within the next two decades, mind you.

Best part of it is, it could actually work.
With a single eureka and a deployment plan that shows uncanny smarts for context analysis, the same man / company could be both the inventor, the initiator and the main agent of the most significant milestone to date on the way to green power and CO2 emission reduction.

The idea is simple: gas-powered cars are responsible for about 25% of the human-related CO2 emissions, but electric cars are plagued by their limited autonomy and the recharge time of today's batteries , not to mention their unfavorable cost of ownership.

Eureka.
Agassi's solution is to remove the battery from the end-user's side of the equation, and not for trolley wheels.
In the Better Place model, the killer app is gas stations equivalents that can swap the main electric battery of a car in the same time (or less) it takes to fill a tank of gas today, with less hassle for the user. Better even, by taking advantage of a car's downtime on the parking lot to recharge the batteries, these pit stops would be only occasional, and in any case less frequent than with a gasoline car.

Swapping the actual battery instead of recharging it is genuinely brilliant, largely because it's practical, provided the infrastructure allows the process to be fully automated, a plan that doesn't have to worry about backward compatibility or established providers slowing down the penetration of Better Place-compatible battery swap stations, because there is no competition yet.

Electric car owners don't have to front the cost of the batteries anymore, and re-pay it over time through the e-miles they're billed on battery swap (much like today's cell phones are sold below cost by telcos and repaid by the customer through her phone bills/minutes recharges).
Not only does this solution reduce the cost of acquisition and total cost of ownership for the customer while solving the autonomy issues, but it also enables all electric cars to seamlessly upgrade to the latest in batteries technology as those become available in power stations, further reducing the per-mile cost and environmental footprint of cars over time.

The required infrastructure may seem like a huge barrier to entry, until you realize building charge spots at home, on the workplace parking lot isn't such a big deal, since they're basically smart power outlets.
As for the much more innovative Battery Switch Stations, it definitely takes more heavy duty work, what with the cars on conveyor belts and the automated underside extraction/replacement of batteries in under 5', but I'd guess in these times of economic collapse, the extra jobs are welcome, and the real estate for that can be found at affordable prices, where simply converting existing gas stations is not an option.

Double-plus smart.
You would expect such a perfect plan to be instantly torpedo'ed by BigOil™ with all the weight they can put to milk the last of the gasoline profit until the world ends, right ?
That's where Agassi's business acumen really shines: after solving the practical issues on the wares front, he figured how to reach critical mass to force his way in by going for the most eager early adopter for anything that gets them out of OPEC and Iranian grip: Israel.
Then he moved on to the euro tree-huggers with their 100+ % taxes on gasoline and gas-powered cars, and to the third-worldish/developping countries that aren't too happy about spending their limited monies on Saudi oil when they could use homegrown electricity instead.
Australia, Canada, Japan are hopping on the bandwagon already, with many others to follow …well, pretty much any place gasoline is expensive and not locally produced in sufficient quantities to feed domestic needs can see the incentive in the model.
The US of A lag behind still, as usual when it comes to not entirely burning down the planet, yet the combo of Obama's green bent with a totally wrecked economy should steer Uncle Sam toward the clean electrons light sometime before people start shooting each other for jerrycans, Mad Max style.

Full spiel @ TED '09.



Although there obviously are some bumps to iron out before the Better Place EV go global as intended, such as the big issue of actually feeding all those batteries with clean juice — lest eco-friendly EVs have to run on on dirty electrons from coal/diesel power plants — there is a good chance this model might work out: context has never been better for radical changes in the human transportation industry, and green is the new pink.

Where Google claims Do no evil as its motto (which is unrealistic, sounds a bit holier-than-thou and is largely disproved by the facts), Agassi takes a more radical and uplifting approach of not just dreaming the world was a Better Place.

My 2KW.
The enabler value of this project is not to be overlooked either: not only does it have the potential to single-handedly grow the market for clean electricity to critical mass, but it should make green juice available anywhere you have cars, which is also where consumer of electricity (for other purposes) hang out.

Once the infrastructure is there, and you can buy clean electrons right at home or at the corner shop for cheaper than the no-name current of your local utility company, both on tab and canned, the realm of possibles for creative/derivative applications (and lawsuits) is rather shweet.

Despite appeasing cookies thrown in the general direction of electric utility companies such as "Better Place’s services will also create an opportunity for utilities to utilize electricity produced from intermittent renewable energy sources more effectively (e.g., wind power generated at night).", it's pretty obvious where this is headed: the electrons route is about to become a two-way street as consumers awareness of electricity as a product (as in good/commodity) rises.

It's a recurring theme in Better Place's discourse that not all electrons are equal, depending on how they are produced, harvested, distributed and used.
With the green fad nowhere near ending, organic junkies will jump at the opportunity to switch to clean electrons for much more than powering their cars, as soon as convenience meets quality.
It won't be long after Better Place goes gold before homegrown and farmer-market styled electrons offers begin to flourish.

Will the utility companies cling on their crumbling monopolies, or embrace the change to get in business with local producers by offering to store and distribute their green juice ?
My guess is: both, and the former will go down lobbying and suing till they're blue in the face and get washed off.
The remaining ones will have to fight for their lives, by competing on retail price and/or perceived value (green is better, hence worth more) driving up the demand for affordable clean electrons.

I suspect Shai Agassi knows this already, but I can see clean electrons becoming an everyday alternative currency before 2030 if Better Place works out halfway as good as announced.

Meanwhile, I'd put my money in flywheels and efficient small scale water turbines if I had any (I'll leave as an exercise for the reader to work out what just crossed my mind, here).



20090521

Me luv Charlie.

Charles Stross is one of the most endearing SciFi writers of the past decade, and I mean that in a good way.
He mans a very stimulating online diary, which he recently moved into a previously deserted domain of his: accelerando.org.
While announcing the relocation, he mentioned his Singularity ! A Tough Guide to the Rapture of the Nerds, which is not only funny as hell but also happens to be TiddlyWiki-powered.

Mom, I think I'm in love, I hope you'll understand.

PS: those stranded in Baltimore over this coming weekend (I know at least one who is) may find comfort knowing it's also where Charlie is (lolcat and stuff).

20090516

Operating system of me.

This post summarizes a few ideas which I hold to be true, while not necessarily endorsing them from an ethics standpoint, and which you can assume I take for granted in any piece of opinion I write.
Being one of those people who are never entirely comfortable with certainty, and live with the nagging feeling that confidence is mostly about overlooking stuff — the paradox is only apparent — there isn't much I take for granted.

This list is intended as a helper resource for whoever decides to enter a discussion with me: if any of those seem too deeply flawed to you, you'll save us both time and frustration by first correcting me on those postulates you deem broken before you try to skin any other beast — either that or drop it.

Thanks.


[For lack of a more sensible ordering (that I can figure), entries are organized by growing character count.]
  • Less is (often) more.
  • You can't un-fry things.
  • Diversity is inherently desirable.
  • The passing of time has no purpose.
  • 90% of any human production is crud.
  • A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
  • Convenience beats quality under most circumstances.
  • The map is not the territory — don't get caught in metaphors.
  • Hard work and steadfastness can't alone salvage flawed designs.
  • Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.
  • Those who most tend to seek power are less likely to exert it wisely.
  • Our brains don't naturally grasp statistics, not even simple percentages.
  • Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.
  • Ideas should not be held responsible for the people who claim to defend them.
  • It's unlikely there is a god… even more unlikely it cares in the least about you.
  • Evolution is not a perfecting principle, it works on the just-good-enough principle.
  • Concepts should not be judged based solely on the success or failure of their implementations.
  • In most competitions, the optimal strategy is to hamper opponents' ability to compete whenever possible.
• New one-line-beliefs will be added as they come, if/when applicable.

• These one-liners each ought to link to a full entry eventually, but as usual, don't hold your breath, this blog is a low-priority item as far as I'm concerned.

• Catchy zingers that happen to be corollary to any of the above have been purposefully omitted from this short list, and will be covered — if ever — in the full-entry versions.
Ex: I strongly support the notion that "Universal Suffrage is a scam", but it doesn't warrant an entry in the list above, as it is merely a corollary of several of other listed postulates (primarily but not limited to) "the optimal strategy in most competitions…", "convenience beats quality…", "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing." and "those who most tend to seek power…".
Ditto for: "Don't wait for your afterlife to make something of your time, there is no respawn for you noob."