Yep, the bell has begun to toll...ding, dong, the witch is dead...

January 21, 2008 marked the death-knell for the gas-run vehicle, friends. As of two days ago, Monday, the oil-powered auto has taken one step into the dusty pages of the history tomes with the advent of the oil-free, hybrid-free, canola oil-free electric car; or EV, for short.

Project Better Place -- a pioneering US-Israeli technology startup -- backed by the mega-clout of the world's 4th-largest car manufacturer, Renault-Nissan, plus $200M US in needed venture capital -- boldly announced the commencement of a mass marketing campaign for the EV in the State of Israel which is set to make that country virtually independent of Arab oil by the year 2020.

The move was an unprecedented one for the car industry.

It marked the first time a national government went to bat for a technology startup with its bold declaration that it would be supporting the mass marketing and production of the electric vehicle for its entire citizenry.



Shai Agassi, Project Better Place's globetrotting CEO, rolled out the plan on Monday in the Israeli capital, Jerusalem, with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, its Nobel Prize-winning President Shimon Peres, Renault-Nissan CEO Charles Ghosan, and members of the world's press corps in attendance.

During the press conference, PEP's Agassi cut right to the chase:

** by 2010, over 100,000 EVs will populate Israel's clogged roads.

** by that same year, PEP will be rolled out over 5 countries worldwide.

** with the price of a barrel of oil now approaching its likely midpoint of $100/bbl (likely to end up at $150/bbl, according to market experts), countries that don't stockpile sufficient petroleum reserves will be forced -- very much like heroin addicts with festering injection sores on their forearms -- to go "black gold" cold turkey. Ergo, the EV.

** the price of maintaining and running a car in Israel today costs more than thrice its original purchase price (the cost of an Israeli gallon [= approx. 4 litres] of gas today exceeds 6 USD. That's more than 1.50 USD/litre, and rising).

** the Renault-Nissan-PEP initiative in Israel will operate very much like mobile phone pre-paid credits. Pre-pay for what use, and hedge against petroleum-rate fluctuations by locking in your monthly operational costs in advance.

Have a spin around the blogosphere and PEP's site for yourself, since there's heaps of material on offer.

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The Czech Republic could seriously use some EVs on its roads. At least in the big cities, and especially for fancy tourist spots like Prague.

Exhaust fumes, over time, erode the surfaces of our Slovenian-designed, Austro-Hungarian-financed, and Czechoslovak-constructed masterpieces in Prague's Inner District. They make breathing exceedingly difficult. They're revolting. And in the ultimate coup de grace -- they are cacophonously disruptive.

EVs could solve many of these conundrums, especially if Renault-Nissan delivers on its vaunted promise to make its EVs' chassis sexy enough to have mass appeal.

And here in Central Europe, we're small enough, brave enough, and technologically-gifted enough to justify a large rollout of EVs in our adolecent democracy.

My recommendation? Let's start small. Let's a introduce these EVs into a manageable, industrialized, constructive (read: non-lazy) market like Brno/Bruenn, and with some success, we can gradually transition them to sleepy Praha/Prag. From there, to Slovakia, and onward -- mush, mush! -- further east.

Not a bad idea, if you ask me...