How does one kill big oil?

One of these days people will get wise and realize that I post way too many links to Wired and that I'd be better served by killing this blog altogether and just linking to their web site and letting everyone cherrypick stories they find interesting.

Just not today.

I hit a confluence of stories today with things I'd read there and the buzz created by Barack Obama's speech about the need to start cutting ties with the oil companies. It's pretty exciting, but of course, that's what convention speeches are all about - creating excitement and giving the candidates a strong surge heading into the fall.

Hey, it beats news that the Republican nominee for Vice President is in favor of teaching Creationism in classrooms. Oh my.

First, from a short essay on Thomas Friedman's new book is a call for action and a systems approach to ending oil dependence. In it is a quote that's been with me for the past few weeks:

"The Stone Age didn't end because we ran out of stone," he says. Likewise, the climate-destroying fossil-fuel age will end only if we invent our way out of it.

But he's not suggesting a new Manhattan Project. "Twelve guys and gals going off to Los Alamos won't solve this problem," Friedman says. "We need 100,000 people in 100,000 garages trying 100,000 things — in the hope that five of them break through."

Our current efforts are not only inadequate, they're hopelessly haphazard and piecemeal. Friedman argues it'll take a coordinated, top-to-bottom approach, from the White House to corporations to consumers. "Without a systems approach, what do you end up with?" he asks. "Corn ethanol in Iowa."

Ouch. Sorry, Iowa. You might want to make some calls to the good folks at Jiffy Pop to see how they're doing in terms of stock. You might have some corn on your hands to offload.

In the same issue is a rather lengthy piece that highlights a revolutionary new way of manufacturing, running and marketing electric cars. Intertwined with that are stories of a man and a company that I'd work for without question and I'm not the only one.

I know I rarely read lengthy links, so I'll give you the broad points here, but if you have a little time, I suggest reading through it or picking up this month's hard copy and reading through the cover story.

Shai Agassi is a relative newcomer to the electric car market, but has an impressive pedigree and no major hang ups with slaughtering America's sacred cows (like the internal combustion engine). After accepting to Young Global Leaders, he seriously sunk his teeth into environmental issues.

Starting with home energy use, he set his sights a bit higher and dove into the car market. That's where things started getting interesting. First up for Agassi was to outline life with an electric car and to work on batteries first - an issue since the invention of the first automobiles.

Car batteries, then and now, are heavy and expensive, don't last long, and take forever to recharge. In five minutes you can fill a car with enough gas to go 300 miles, but five minutes of charging at home gets you only about 8 miles in an electric car. Clever tricks, like adding "range extenders"—gas engines that kick in when a battery dies—end up making the cars too expensive.

Agassi dealt with the battery issue by simply swatting it away. Previous approaches relied on a traditional manufacturing formula: We make the cars, you buy them. Agassi reimagined the entire automotive ecosystem by proposing a new concept he called the Electric Recharge Grid Operator. It was an unorthodox mashup of the automotive and mobile phone industries. Instead of gas stations on every corner, the ERGO would blanket a country with a network of "smart" charge spots. Drivers could plug in anywhere, anytime, and would subscribe to a specific plan—unlimited miles, a maximum number of miles each month, or pay as you go—all for less than the equivalent cost for gas. They'd buy their car from the operator, who would offer steep discounts, perhaps even give the cars away. The profit would come from selling electricity—the minutes.

There would be plugs in homes, offices, shopping malls. And when customers couldn't wait to "fill up," they'd go to battery exchange stations where they would pull into car-wash-like sheds, and in a few minutes, a hydraulic lift would swap the depleted battery with a fresh one. Drivers wouldn't pay a penny extra: The ERGO would own the battery.

Damn.

This brings us full circle to a Jalopnik post today asking for a Manhattan Project style overhaul of the process, should Obama win in November. Funny, I had just talked myself out of that after the first link...

I think everyone would be well served by taking a meeting with Agassi and just getting a feel for what he's proposing. In one of life's little twists, Hawaii is the frontrunner for implementation in the United States, with a small land mass that is dependent on imported oil for all of its needs.

So, in a week of high ideals and grand plans that seemingly know no bounds, I point you in the direction of another one - Agassi's. It's a long shot right now and would require Americans to accept something different from what they're used to and see as their birthright - bigger, faster cars that can run through hundreds of miles of desert with the air conditioning on full blast.

Count me as someone who loves those cars - and has made no secret of his outright lust for the old gas guzzlers of the 1950s, 60s and 70s - but it's time to face facts and to stop chasing down the same arid dead ends.

Agassi seems to be on the right track - he doesn't think like normal people do.

When I ask Shai if he's worried about a competitor stealing his idea, he stares at me like I'm an idiot. "The mission is to end oil," he says, "not create a company."