The electric vehicle (EV) was first created en-mass for the consumer market in 1996. Of course, due to many reasons (and some interesting conspiracy theories) it failed by 1999. Nowadays, we want electric cars, but we don’t like the hassle that comes with them.

The EV1

The biggest problem in owning an electric car is you can’t just “fill up” wherever you go. Shai Agassi is going to change that.

Shai Agassi, founder and CEO of Better Place

Shai Agassi is the founder and CEO of the company Better Place. Better Place does not just create and sell electric cars, but it creates and sells electric car infrastructure to countries. The first customer was Shai Agassi’s home-country of Israel, and now better place is in Denmark, and beginning its expansion into Australia, and even has an office in Ontario, Canada.

Shai Agassi does not only plan on selling electric cars, or electric infrastructure. He plans on selling the batteries to the electric cars, effectively giving him a monopoly on this new “gas” equivalent. He has taken the “razor, razor-blade” business model to the extreme, and hopes to make billions from it. Who can blame him?