ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Shai Agassi - Green auto pioneer
Shai Agassi wants to put you behind the wheel of an electric car -- but he doesn't want you to sacrifice convenience (or cash) to do it.

Why you should listen

When horrific climate-change scenarios elicit little but endless chatter from governments and entrenched special interests, the difference between talk and action represent an embarrassing gulf. Meet Shai Agassi, who has stepped fearlessly into that gap. His approach to solving the puzzle of electric automobiles could spark nothing short of an automotive revolution.

Agassi stunned the software industry in 2007 by resigning from SAP to focus on his vision for breaking the world's fossil-fuel habit, a cause he had championed since his fuse was lit at a Young Global Leaders conference in 2005. Through his enthusiastic persistence, Agassi's startup Better Place has signed up some impressive partners -- including Nissan-Renault and the countries of Israel and Denmark.

More profile about the speaker
Shai Agassi | Speaker | TED.com
TED2009

Shai Agassi: A new ecosystem for electric cars

Filmed:
1,294,939 views

Forget about the hybrid auto -- Shai Agassi says it's electric cars or bust if we want to impact emissions. His company, Better Place, has a radical plan to take entire countries oil-free by 2020.
- Green auto pioneer
Shai Agassi wants to put you behind the wheel of an electric car -- but he doesn't want you to sacrifice convenience (or cash) to do it. Full bio

Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.

00:18
So how would you run a whole country without oil?
0
0
4000
00:22
That's the question that sort of hit me
1
4000
2000
00:24
in the middle of a Davos afternoon about four years ago.
2
6000
3000
00:27
It never left my brain.
3
9000
2000
00:29
And I started playing with it more like a puzzle.
4
11000
3000
00:32
The original thought I had: this must be ethanol.
5
14000
2000
00:34
So I went out and researched ethanol,
6
16000
2000
00:36
and found out you need the Amazon in your backyard in every country.
7
18000
3000
00:39
About six months later I figured out it must be hydrogen,
8
21000
3000
00:42
until some scientist told me the unfortunate truth,
9
24000
3000
00:45
which is, you actually use more
10
27000
3000
00:48
clean electrons than the ones you get
11
30000
2000
00:50
inside a car, if you use hydrogen.
12
32000
2000
00:52
So that is not going to be the path to go.
13
34000
3000
00:55
And then sort of through a process of
14
37000
3000
00:58
wandering around, I got to the thought
15
40000
2000
01:00
that actually if you could convert an entire country to electric cars,
16
42000
3000
01:03
in a way that is convenient and affordable,
17
45000
3000
01:06
you could get to a solution.
18
48000
3000
01:09
Now I started this from a point of view that
19
51000
3000
01:12
it has to be something that scales en masse.
20
54000
2000
01:14
Not how do you build one car,
21
56000
2000
01:16
but how do you scale this so that it can become
22
58000
2000
01:18
something that is used by 99 percent of the population?
23
60000
5000
01:23
The thought that came to mind is that it needs to be as good
24
65000
3000
01:26
as any car that you would have today.
25
68000
2000
01:28
So one, it has to be more convenient than a car.
26
70000
3000
01:31
And two, it has be more affordable than today's cars.
27
73000
3000
01:34
Affordable is not a 40,000 dollar sedan, right?
28
76000
3000
01:37
Alright? That's not something that we can finance or buy today.
29
79000
3000
01:40
And convenient is not something that you drive for an hour and charge for eight.
30
82000
4000
01:44
So we're bound with the laws of physics
31
86000
3000
01:47
and the laws of economics.
32
89000
2000
01:49
And so the thought that I started with was
33
91000
3000
01:52
how do you do this, still within the boundary
34
94000
3000
01:55
of the science we know today --
35
97000
2000
01:57
no time for science fair, no time for playing around with things
36
99000
3000
02:00
or waiting for the magic battery to show up.
37
102000
2000
02:02
How do you do it within the economics that we have today?
38
104000
2000
02:04
How do you do it from the power of the consumer up?
39
106000
2000
02:06
And not from the power of an edict down.
40
108000
3000
02:09
On a random visit to Tesla on some afternoon,
41
111000
3000
02:12
I actually found out that the answer comes
42
114000
2000
02:14
from separating between the car ownership
43
116000
3000
02:17
and the battery ownership.
44
119000
2000
02:19
In a sense if you want to think about it this is the classic
45
121000
3000
02:22
"batteries not included."
46
124000
3000
02:25
Now if you separate between the two,
47
127000
2000
02:27
you could actually answer the need for a convenient car
48
129000
3000
02:30
by creating a network,
49
132000
2000
02:32
by creating a network before the cars show up.
50
134000
3000
02:35
The network has two components in them.
51
137000
3000
02:38
First component is you charge the car whenever you stop --
52
140000
3000
02:41
ends up that cars are these strange beasts that drive
53
143000
3000
02:44
for about two hours and park for about 22 hours.
54
146000
3000
02:47
If you drive a car in the morning and drive it back in the afternoon
55
149000
4000
02:51
the ratio of charge to drive is about a minute for a minute.
56
153000
3000
02:54
And so the first thought that came to mind is,
57
156000
2000
02:56
everywhere we park we have electric power.
58
158000
3000
02:59
Now it sounds crazy. But in some places around the world,
59
161000
2000
03:01
like Scandinavia, you already have that.
60
163000
3000
03:04
If you park your car and didn't plug in the heater,
61
166000
2000
03:06
when you come back you don't have a car. It just doesn't work.
62
168000
3000
03:09
Now that last mile,
63
171000
3000
03:12
last foot, in a sense,
64
174000
2000
03:14
is the first step of the infrastructure.
65
176000
1000
03:15
The second step of the infrastructure needs to take care
66
177000
2000
03:17
of the range extension.
67
179000
2000
03:19
See we're bound by today's technology on batteries,
68
181000
3000
03:22
which is about 120 miles if you want to stay within
69
184000
2000
03:24
reasonable space and weight limitations.
70
186000
4000
03:28
120 miles is a good enough range for a lot of people.
71
190000
4000
03:32
But you never want to get stuck.
72
194000
2000
03:34
So what we added is a second element to our network,
73
196000
2000
03:36
which is a battery swap system.
74
198000
2000
03:38
You drive. You take your depleted battery out.
75
200000
3000
03:41
A full battery comes on. And you drive on.
76
203000
3000
03:44
You don't do it as a human being. You do it as a machine.
77
206000
2000
03:46
It looks like a car wash. You come into your car wash.
78
208000
3000
03:49
And a plate comes up, holds your battery, takes it out, puts it back in, and
79
211000
3000
03:52
within two minutes you're back on the road
80
214000
2000
03:54
and you can go again.
81
216000
3000
03:57
If you had charge spots everywhere,
82
219000
2000
03:59
and you had battery swap stations everywhere,
83
221000
2000
04:01
how often would you do it? And it ends up
84
223000
2000
04:03
that you'd do swapping less times than you stop at a gas station.
85
225000
4000
04:07
As a matter of fact, we added to the contract.
86
229000
3000
04:10
We said that if you stop to swap your battery more than 50 times a year
87
232000
3000
04:13
we start paying you money
88
235000
2000
04:15
because it's an inconvenience.
89
237000
2000
04:17
Then we looked at the question of the affordability.
90
239000
3000
04:20
We looked at the question, what happens when the battery is
91
242000
2000
04:22
disconnected from the car.
92
244000
2000
04:24
What is the cost of that battery?
93
246000
2000
04:26
Everybody tells us batteries are so expensive.
94
248000
2000
04:28
What we found out, when you move from molecules to electrons,
95
250000
3000
04:31
something interesting happens.
96
253000
2000
04:33
We can go back to the original economics of the car and look at it again.
97
255000
3000
04:36
The battery is not the gas tank, in a sense.
98
258000
2000
04:38
Remember in your car you have a gas tank.
99
260000
2000
04:40
You have the crude oil.
100
262000
2000
04:42
And you have refining and delivery of that crude oil
101
264000
2000
04:44
as what we call petrol or gasoline.
102
266000
2000
04:46
The battery in this sense, is the crude oil.
103
268000
4000
04:50
We have a battery bay. It costs the same hundred dollars
104
272000
3000
04:53
as the gas tank.
105
275000
2000
04:55
But the crude oil is replaced with a battery.
106
277000
2000
04:57
Just it doesn't burn. It consumes itself
107
279000
2000
04:59
step after step after step.
108
281000
2000
05:01
It has 2,000 life cycles these days.
109
283000
2000
05:03
And so it's sort of a mini well.
110
285000
3000
05:06
We were asked in the past when we bought an electric car
111
288000
2000
05:08
to pay for the entire well, for the life of the car.
112
290000
2000
05:10
Nobody wants to buy a mini well when they buy a car.
113
292000
3000
05:13
In a sense what we've done is
114
295000
2000
05:15
we've created a new consumable.
115
297000
2000
05:17
You, today, buy gasoline miles.
116
299000
2000
05:19
And we created electric miles.
117
301000
3000
05:22
And the price of electric miles ends up being a very interesting number.
118
304000
4000
05:26
Today 2010, in volume,
119
308000
2000
05:28
when we come to market, it is eight cents a mile.
120
310000
4000
05:32
Those of you who have a hard time calculating what that means --
121
314000
2000
05:34
in the average consumer
122
316000
3000
05:37
environment we're in in the U.S.
123
319000
2000
05:39
20 miles per gallon that's a buck 50, a buck 60 a gallon.
124
321000
3000
05:42
That's cheaper than today's gasoline, even in the U.S.
125
324000
4000
05:46
In Europe where taxes are in place,
126
328000
3000
05:49
that's the equivalent to a minus 60 dollar barrel.
127
331000
5000
05:54
But e-miles follow Moore's Law.
128
336000
4000
05:58
They go from eight cents a mile in 2010,
129
340000
3000
06:01
to four cents a mile in 2015,
130
343000
2000
06:03
to two cents a mile by 2020.
131
345000
4000
06:07
Why? Because batteries life cycle improve --
132
349000
3000
06:10
a bit of improvement on energy density, which reduces the price.
133
352000
3000
06:13
And these prices are actually with clean electrons.
134
355000
3000
06:16
We do not use any electrons that come from coal.
135
358000
4000
06:20
So in a sense this is
136
362000
2000
06:22
an absolute zero-carbon, zero-fossil fuel
137
364000
3000
06:25
electric mile at two cents a mile by 2020.
138
367000
4000
06:29
Now even if we get to 40 miles per gallon
139
371000
2000
06:31
by 2020, which is our desire.
140
373000
2000
06:33
Imagine only 40 miles per gallon cars would be on the road.
141
375000
3000
06:36
That is an 80 cent gallon.
142
378000
2000
06:38
An 80 cent gallon means, if the entire Pacific
143
380000
2000
06:40
would convert to crude oil,
144
382000
2000
06:42
and we'd let any oil company bring it out and refine it,
145
384000
3000
06:45
they still can't compete with two cents a mile.
146
387000
4000
06:49
That's a new economic factor,
147
391000
2000
06:51
which is fascinating to most people.
148
393000
2000
06:53
Now this would have been a wonderful paper.
149
395000
2000
06:55
That's how I solved it in my head. It was a white paper I handed out to governments.
150
397000
3000
06:58
And some governments told me that it's fascinating
151
400000
2000
07:00
that the younger generation actually thinks about these things.
152
402000
3000
07:03
(Laughter)
153
405000
1000
07:04
Until I got to the
154
406000
2000
07:06
true young global leader, Shimon Peres, President of Israel,
155
408000
3000
07:09
and he ran a beautiful manipulation on me.
156
411000
3000
07:12
First he let me go to the prime minister of the country,
157
414000
2000
07:14
who told me, if you can find the money you need for this network,
158
416000
2000
07:16
200 million dollars,
159
418000
2000
07:18
and if you can find a car company
160
420000
2000
07:20
that will build that car in mass volume,
161
422000
2000
07:22
in two million cars -- that's what we needed in Israel --
162
424000
2000
07:24
I'll give you country to invest the 200 million into.
163
426000
4000
07:28
Peres thought that was a great idea.
164
430000
3000
07:31
So we went out, and we looked at all the car companies.
165
433000
4000
07:35
We sent letters to all the car companies.
166
437000
2000
07:37
Three of them never showed up. One of them asked us
167
439000
2000
07:39
if we would stay with hybrids and they would give us a discount.
168
441000
3000
07:42
But one of them Carlos Ghosn, CEO of Renault and Nissan,
169
444000
3000
07:45
when asked about hybrids said something very fascinating.
170
447000
3000
07:48
He said hybrids are like mermaids.
171
450000
2000
07:50
When you want a fish you get a woman and
172
452000
2000
07:52
when you need a woman you get a fish.
173
454000
2000
07:54
(Laughter)
174
456000
3000
07:57
And Ghosn came up and said,
175
459000
2000
07:59
"I have the car, Mr. Peres; I will build you the cars."
176
461000
2000
08:01
And actually true to form, Renault has put a billion and a half dollars
177
463000
3000
08:04
in building nine different types of cars that fit this kind of model
178
466000
3000
08:07
that will come into the market in mass volume --
179
469000
3000
08:10
mass volume being the first year, 100 thousand cars.
180
472000
3000
08:13
It's the first mass-volume electric car,
181
475000
2000
08:15
zero-emission electric car in the market.
182
477000
3000
08:18
I was running, as Chris said,
183
480000
4000
08:22
to be the CEO of a large software company called SAP
184
484000
3000
08:25
And then Peres said, "Well won't you run this project?"
185
487000
4000
08:29
And I said, "I'm ready for CEO" And he said,
186
491000
2000
08:31
"Oh no no no no no. You've got to explain to me,
187
493000
3000
08:34
what is more important than saving your country and saving the world,
188
496000
2000
08:36
that you would go and do?"
189
498000
2000
08:38
And I had to quit and come and do this thing called A Better Place.
190
500000
2000
08:40
We then decided to scale it up.
191
502000
3000
08:43
We went to other countries. As I said we went to Denmark.
192
505000
2000
08:45
And Denmark set this beautiful policy;
193
507000
2000
08:47
it's called the IQ test.
194
509000
2000
08:49
It's inversely proportional to taxes.
195
511000
2000
08:51
They put 180 percent tax on gasoline cars
196
513000
4000
08:55
and zero tax on zero-emission cars.
197
517000
2000
08:57
So if you want to buy a gasoline car in Denmark, it costs you about 60,000 Euros.
198
519000
4000
09:01
If you buy our car it's about 20,000 Euros.
199
523000
2000
09:03
If you fail the IQ test they ask you to leave the country.
200
525000
3000
09:06
(Laughter)
201
528000
2000
09:08
We then were sort of coined as the guys
202
530000
2000
09:10
who run only in small islands.
203
532000
2000
09:12
I know most people don't think of Israel as a small island,
204
534000
2000
09:14
but Israel is an island -- it's a transportation island.
205
536000
3000
09:17
If your car is driving outside Israel it's been stolen.
206
539000
3000
09:20
(Laughter)
207
542000
2000
09:22
If you're thinking about it in terms of islands,
208
544000
3000
09:25
we decided to go to the biggest island that we could find,
209
547000
2000
09:27
and that was Australia. The third country we announced was Australia.
210
549000
3000
09:30
It's got three centers --
211
552000
2000
09:32
in Brisbane, in Melbourne, in Sydney --
212
554000
3000
09:35
and one freeway, one electric freeway that connects them.
213
557000
2000
09:37
The next island
214
559000
2000
09:39
was not too hard to find, and that was Hawaii.
215
561000
2000
09:41
We decided to come into the U.S.
216
563000
2000
09:43
and pick the two best places --
217
565000
2000
09:45
the one where you didn't need any range extension.
218
567000
2000
09:47
Hawaii you can drive around the island on one battery.
219
569000
2000
09:49
And if you really have a long day you can switch,
220
571000
2000
09:51
and keep on driving around the island.
221
573000
2000
09:53
The second one was the San Francisco Bay Area
222
575000
2000
09:55
where Gavin Newsom created a beautiful policy across all the mayors.
223
577000
3000
09:58
He decided that he's going to take over
224
580000
2000
10:00
the state, unofficially, and then officially,
225
582000
3000
10:03
and then created this beautiful Region One policy.
226
585000
4000
10:07
In the San Francisco Bay Area not only do you have
227
589000
2000
10:09
the highest concentration of Priuses,
228
591000
2000
10:11
but you also have the perfect range extender.
229
593000
2000
10:13
It's called the other car.
230
595000
2000
10:15
As we stared scaling it up
231
597000
3000
10:18
we looked at what is the problem to come up to the U.S.?
232
600000
3000
10:21
Why is this a big issue?
233
603000
2000
10:23
And the most fascinating thing we've learned is that,
234
605000
2000
10:25
when you have small problems on the individual level,
235
607000
3000
10:28
like the price of gasoline to drive every morning.
236
610000
3000
10:31
You don't notice it, but when the aggregate comes up
237
613000
2000
10:33
you're dead. Alright?
238
615000
2000
10:35
So the price of oil, much like
239
617000
3000
10:38
lots of other curves that we've seen,
240
620000
2000
10:40
goes along a depletion curve.
241
622000
2000
10:42
The foundation of this curve is that we keep losing the wells that are close to the ground.
242
624000
3000
10:45
And we keep getting wells that are farther away from the ground.
243
627000
3000
10:48
It becomes more and more and more expensive to dig them out.
244
630000
2000
10:50
You think, well it's been up, it's been down,
245
632000
3000
10:53
its been up, it's going to keep on going up and down.
246
635000
2000
10:55
Here is the problem:
247
637000
2000
10:57
at 147 dollars a barrel, which we were in six months ago,
248
639000
3000
11:00
the U.S. spent a ton of money to get oil.
249
642000
4000
11:04
Then we lost our economy and we went back down to 47 --
250
646000
3000
11:07
sometimes it's 40, sometimes it's 50.
251
649000
2000
11:09
Now we're running a stimulus package.
252
651000
2000
11:11
It's called the trillion-dollar stimulus package.
253
653000
2000
11:13
We're going to revive the economy. Hopefully it happens between now and 2015,
254
655000
4000
11:17
somewhere in that space.
255
659000
2000
11:19
What happens when the economy recovers?
256
661000
3000
11:22
By 2015 we would have had at least 250 million new cars
257
664000
5000
11:27
even at the pace we're going at right now.
258
669000
2000
11:29
That's another 30 percent demand on oil.
259
671000
2000
11:31
That is another 25 million barrels a day.
260
673000
3000
11:34
That's all the U.S. usage today.
261
676000
4000
11:38
In other words at some point when we've recovered we go up to the peak.
262
680000
3000
11:41
And then we do the OPEC stimulus package
263
683000
2000
11:43
also known as 200 dollars a barrel.
264
685000
2000
11:45
We take our money and we give it away.
265
687000
2000
11:47
You know what happens at that point?
266
689000
2000
11:49
We go back down. It's going to go up and down.
267
691000
2000
11:51
And the downs are going to be much longer
268
693000
2000
11:53
and the ups are going to be much shorter.
269
695000
2000
11:55
And that's the difference between problems that are additive,
270
697000
3000
11:58
like CO2, which we go slowly up and then we tip,
271
700000
3000
12:01
and problems that are depletive,
272
703000
2000
12:03
in which we lose what we have,
273
705000
2000
12:05
which oscillate, and they oscillate until
274
707000
2000
12:07
we lose everything we've got.
275
709000
4000
12:11
Now we actually looked at what the answer would be.
276
713000
2000
12:13
Right? Remember in the campaign: one million
277
715000
2000
12:15
hybrid cars by 2015.
278
717000
4000
12:19
That is 0.5 percent of the U.S. oil consumption.
279
721000
4000
12:23
That is oh point oh well percent of the rest of the world.
280
725000
5000
12:28
That won't do much difference.
281
730000
2000
12:30
We looked at an MIT study:
282
732000
2000
12:32
ten million electric cars on the global roads.
283
734000
3000
12:35
Ten million out of 500 million we will add between now and then.
284
737000
4000
12:39
That is the most pessimistic number you can have.
285
741000
2000
12:41
It's also the most optimistic number
286
743000
2000
12:43
because it means we will scale this industry
287
745000
3000
12:46
from 100 thousand cars is 2011,
288
748000
2000
12:48
to 10 million cars by 2016 --
289
750000
4000
12:52
100 x growth in less than five years.
290
754000
5000
12:57
You have to remember that the world today is bringing in so many cars.
291
759000
3000
13:00
We have 10 million cars by region.
292
762000
3000
13:03
That's an enormous amount of cars.
293
765000
2000
13:05
China is adding those cars --
294
767000
2000
13:07
India, Russia, Brazil.
295
769000
2000
13:09
We have all these regions.
296
771000
2000
13:11
Europe has solved it. They just put a tax on gasoline.
297
773000
2000
13:13
They'll be the first in line to get off
298
775000
2000
13:15
because their prices are high.
299
777000
2000
13:17
China solves it by an edict. At some point they'll just declare
300
779000
2000
13:19
that no gasoline car will come into a city, and that will be it.
301
781000
4000
13:23
The Indians don't even understand why we think of it as a problem
302
785000
3000
13:26
because most people in India fill two or three gallons every time.
303
788000
2000
13:28
For them to get a battery that goes 120 miles
304
790000
3000
13:31
is an extension on range, not a reduction in range.
305
793000
4000
13:35
We're the only ones who don't have the price set right.
306
797000
3000
13:38
We don't have the industry set right.
307
800000
2000
13:40
We don't have any incentive to go and resolve it
308
802000
2000
13:42
across the U.S.
309
804000
2000
13:44
Now where is the car industry on that?
310
806000
2000
13:46
Very interesting. The car industry has been focused just on themselves.
311
808000
3000
13:49
They basically looked at it and said, "Car 1.0
312
811000
2000
13:51
we'll solve everything within the car itself."
313
813000
4000
13:55
No infrastructure, no problem.
314
817000
3000
13:58
We forgot about the entire chain around us.
315
820000
3000
14:01
All this stuff that happens around.
316
823000
2000
14:03
We are looking at the emergence of a car 2.0 --
317
825000
3000
14:06
a whole new market, a whole new business model.
318
828000
3000
14:09
The business model in which the money that is actually coming in,
319
831000
3000
14:12
to drive the car --
320
834000
2000
14:14
the minutes, the miles if you want,
321
836000
2000
14:16
that you are all familiar with --
322
838000
2000
14:18
subsidize the price of the car,
323
840000
3000
14:21
just like cellphones. You'll pay for the miles.
324
843000
2000
14:23
And some of it will go back to the car maker.
325
845000
2000
14:25
Some of it will go back to your own pocket.
326
847000
3000
14:28
But our cars are actually going to be cheaper than gasoline cars.
327
850000
3000
14:31
You're looking at a world where cars are matched with windmills.
328
853000
4000
14:35
In Denmark, we will drive all the cars in Denmark
329
857000
3000
14:38
from windmills, not from oil.
330
860000
3000
14:41
In Israel, we've asked to put a solar farm
331
863000
4000
14:45
in the south of Israel.
332
867000
2000
14:47
And people said, "Oh that's a very very large space that you're asking for."
333
869000
3000
14:50
And we said, "What if we had proven that in the same space
334
872000
2000
14:52
we found oil for the country for the next hundred years?"
335
874000
3000
14:55
And they said, "We tried. There isn't any."
336
877000
2000
14:57
We said, "No no, but what if we prove it?"
337
879000
2000
14:59
And they said, "Well you can dig." And we decided to dig up,
338
881000
2000
15:01
instead of digging down.
339
883000
2000
15:03
These are perfect matches to one another.
340
885000
3000
15:06
Now all you need is about 10 percent
341
888000
3000
15:09
of the electricity generated.
342
891000
2000
15:11
Think of it as a project that spans over about 10 years.
343
893000
3000
15:14
That's one percent a year.
344
896000
2000
15:16
Now when we're looking at solving big problems,
345
898000
3000
15:19
we need to start thinking in two numbers.
346
901000
2000
15:21
And those are not 20 percent by 2020.
347
903000
2000
15:23
The two numbers are zero -- as in zero footprint or zero oil --
348
905000
5000
15:28
and scale it infinity.
349
910000
3000
15:31
And when we go to COP15 at the end of this year
350
913000
2000
15:33
we can't stop thinking of padding CO2.
351
915000
2000
15:35
We have to start thinking about giving kickers to countries
352
917000
2000
15:37
that are willing to go to this kind of scale.
353
919000
3000
15:40
One car emits four tons.
354
922000
2000
15:42
And actually 700 and change million cars today
355
924000
2000
15:44
emit 2.8 billion tons of CO2.
356
926000
3000
15:47
That's, in the additive, about 25 percent of our problem.
357
929000
3000
15:50
Cars and trucks add up to about 25 percent of the world's CO2 emissions.
358
932000
5000
15:55
We have to come and attack this problem
359
937000
2000
15:57
with a focus, with an effort that actually says,
360
939000
2000
15:59
we're going to go to zero before the world ends.
361
941000
3000
16:02
I actually shared that with some legislators here in the U.S.
362
944000
4000
16:06
I shared it with a gentleman called Bobby Kennedy Jr., who is one of my idols.
363
948000
5000
16:11
I told him one of the reasons that
364
953000
2000
16:13
his uncle was remembered
365
955000
2000
16:15
is because he said we're going to send a man to the moon,
366
957000
3000
16:18
and we'll do it by the end of the decade.
367
960000
2000
16:20
We didn't say we're going to send a man 20 percent to the moon.
368
962000
3000
16:23
And there will be about a 20 percent chance we'll recover him.
369
965000
3000
16:26
(Laughter)
370
968000
3000
16:29
He actually shared with me another story, which is from about 200 years ago.
371
971000
4000
16:33
200 years ago, in Parliament, in Great Britain,
372
975000
3000
16:36
there was a long argument
373
978000
2000
16:38
over economy versus morality.
374
980000
2000
16:40
25 percent -- just like 25 percent emissions today comes from cars --
375
982000
4000
16:44
25 percent of their energy
376
986000
3000
16:47
for the entire industrial world in the U.K.
377
989000
3000
16:50
came from a source of energy that was immoral:
378
992000
3000
16:53
human slaves.
379
995000
2000
16:55
And there was an argument. Should we stop using slaves?
380
997000
3000
16:58
And what would it do to our economy?
381
1000000
2000
17:00
And people said, "Well we need to take time to do it.
382
1002000
2000
17:02
Let's not do it immediately. Maybe we free the kids
383
1004000
2000
17:04
and keep the slaves.
384
1006000
3000
17:07
And after a month of arguments they decided to stop slavery,
385
1009000
3000
17:10
and the industrial revolution started within less than one year.
386
1012000
4000
17:14
And the U.K. had 100 years of economic growth.
387
1016000
4000
17:18
We have to make the right moral decision.
388
1020000
3000
17:21
We have to make it immediately.
389
1023000
3000
17:24
We need to have presidential leadership
390
1026000
2000
17:26
just like we had in Israel that said we will end oil.
391
1028000
4000
17:30
And we need to do it not within 20 years or 50 years,
392
1032000
4000
17:34
but within this presidential term
393
1036000
3000
17:37
because if we don't, we will lose our economy,
394
1039000
4000
17:41
right after we'd lost our morality.
395
1043000
2000
17:43
Thank you all very much.
396
1045000
2000
17:45
(Applause)
397
1047000
14000

▲Back to top

ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Shai Agassi - Green auto pioneer
Shai Agassi wants to put you behind the wheel of an electric car -- but he doesn't want you to sacrifice convenience (or cash) to do it.

Why you should listen

When horrific climate-change scenarios elicit little but endless chatter from governments and entrenched special interests, the difference between talk and action represent an embarrassing gulf. Meet Shai Agassi, who has stepped fearlessly into that gap. His approach to solving the puzzle of electric automobiles could spark nothing short of an automotive revolution.

Agassi stunned the software industry in 2007 by resigning from SAP to focus on his vision for breaking the world's fossil-fuel habit, a cause he had championed since his fuse was lit at a Young Global Leaders conference in 2005. Through his enthusiastic persistence, Agassi's startup Better Place has signed up some impressive partners -- including Nissan-Renault and the countries of Israel and Denmark.

More profile about the speaker
Shai Agassi | Speaker | TED.com