The electric car of the... Present?

I Love Symposia! is going back to its roots, with a post about a TED talk!

In his talk, Shai Agassi of Better Place lays out his vision for cheap electric cars running on electricity from 100% renewable sources, and using technology available today. If you live in Israel, Denmark, Australia or Northern California, you are first in line to try out their cars, which will be built by Renault and Nissan.

Agassi gets around the problem of the limited range of electric cars by making the battery quickly and easily replaceable. Thus you'll stop at a petrol battery station and a robotic system will swap out the battery in less than two minutes—presto! Instant battery recharge. That's less time than it takes to fill up.

With one trillion dollars set aside for the economic stimulus, it'll be disappointing if none of it goes to building battery change stations in the US. Ditto for China.

If you're lucky enough to be in one of the pilot regions, be sure to go to the Better Place website for more information! If not, then follow Al Gore's advice and invest in green tech. As Agassi says, this is now a moral choice.

(Just as a quick aside, I was happy to discover that Wordpress.com now allows you to embed TED talks! If you use Wordpress.com, find the announcement here and the instructions here.)