Every now and then you read a piece of journalism that makes an issue so clear, so obvious that you wonder why you hadn’t worked it out yourself (or made a fortune out of it). Daniel Roth, writing in Wired Magazine, has written a piece about Shai Agassi, a former software prodigy who has set up Better Place, which despite the rather schmaltzy moniker could actually be about to change the world.

The company is setting up a system by which electric cars could be introduced. You would plug in your car at home, drive to work where you could recharge, along with other stations co-ordinated with your onboard computer sat-nav and linked to your mobile. It would also have a nice thing on your key fob which would tell you how much battery power you had left (more useful than one of those whistling devices to find your keys). If worst comes to worst, you could even switch your battery at a quasi-carwash place.

For those uninitiated on electric cars, it is becomingly increasingly clear that it is the best option to replace the internal combustion engine. Hydrogen cars are not going to happen and could blow up, which is hard to sell apparently… Biofuels are causing the poor to starve, while hybrids are just a staging post to the future, the cliche goes…

‘Lectric cars, as I am now going to call then, are charged by electricity, it may surprise you to learn. These are not like milkfloats, or golf carts and can in fact have lots of torque, sometimes a bit too much by the looks of the article. They mean no greenhouse or noxious emissions out of the exhaust, and then the government can get on with the business of cleaning up its energy production — nuclear, wind, solar etc etc…

Israel — always keen to not give any money to some Arab states, you imagine — have already signed on as has Denmark, who produce a bit too much electricity from their giant wind farms (see BBC docu link) and can only direct so much at bacon farming and brewing crap lager, presumably. Hawaii is the next target, so who knows…

There is some link to China, before you flee the site and seek recourse. Batteries could be key to electric cars and as Warren Buffett has worked out, China is actually doing rather well at this, along with those clever chaps in Japan. This does raise the question of whether we will switch from oil dependence to battery dependence, but until I see shoppers flocking to Wal-Mart to hoard Duracels, I will sleep easy…

Richard Gilbert, speaking in HK last month (see previous post) said HK was primed for electric future. Could this be the great plan for Donald Bow-Tie’s upcoming policy speech. I suspect not…

So all that needs to happen is now for someone to invent a decent electric car and for this technology to prove it can work on a large scale, and cross our fingers that there is no power cut when you want to get away for the weekend…