$200 Million for Electric Vehicle Charging Stations under “Project Better Place”

Shai Agassi, the former president of products and technology at German software maker SAP, recently announced a long awaited cleantech project named Project Better Place. The project is in goal to build a network of charging stations for electric vehicles around the world.

According to an article in cleantech.com, the investors have placed $200 million for the subscription-based electric charging system. Half of that amount comes from Tel Aviv chemical, shipping and technology company Israel Corp.

Agassi said that he expects the start of the test phase of the project early next year. It moves up several thousand cars signed up by 2009. He is hoping to add around 10,000 cars to the system each month by 2010 and come up with a total of 100,000 cars on the system in each pilot site by the end of that year.

Agassi said, “If a lot of other players come into this field and we can find ways to work well together, it will only accelerate this transition.”

“We’re looking for partners, obviously at a regional level, but also on a global level who want to work with us both in the car industry as well as the energy business," he added.

Agassi is planning to set up a system that is comparable with the cell phone network. Thus, your electricity subscription will permit you to charge up at a plug in station without consider which system you’re on.

Project Better Place might be the first third-party charging system. But, there are other car companies that have proposed systems of their own. It includes Tesla Motors, a San Carlos, California-based company, which is collaborating with Foster City, California’s SolarCity to work on a solar carport for your driveway to power up the high-priced electric Tesla roadster. ZAP, an electric vehicle maker based in Santa Rosa, California, even plans to create curbside solar powered charging stations, in partnership with Youngman Automotive Group.

Last August, Israel Corp. has announced its investment without disclosing the details of the venture. It has 33 percent stake in Project Better Place. And, Israel Corp. chairman Idan Ofer was held as the chairman of the startup.

Currently, the backers are Morgan Stanley, VantagePoint Venture Partners, and a group individual investors namely James Wolfensohn, former head of the World Bank, and Edgar Fronfman Sr., former head of Seagram’s.

Though Agassi have not disclosed the details of which car or energy companies he will be talking to, he said, Project Better Place would be deploying its network on a country by country basis.

Agassi also mentioned that with the use of cell phone model, those people who sign up for the electricity subscriptions would be able to have a choice of cars they could buy or lease under the program. He said, “These cars, based on the subscription contract, will also be subsidized, so that the consumers actually will be able to buy an electric car for a cheaper price than they would be able to buy an internal combustion engine based car.”

Under subscriptions, drivers would have the chance to plug into electric chargers along with the use of battery exchange stations, which will be settle up at parking lots all over the world.

Israel is planned to be the initial location for the project, as Israeli-born Agassi said that the company would start out in areas that make sense. He said, “We’re looking at places where it’s easier to set such networks… The easier places, obviously, are what we call Transportation Islands.” “Some of these are physical islands, some of them are more concentrated urban centers that have a lot of commuters in a small area that usually do not leave the area, either because of geographic or other limitations that bind them into the area,” he added.

Well, this plan is pretty exciting. Maybe it would really boom within 10 year of rollout.