Agassi's Audacious Plan to Put Electric Cars on the Road

NVDL: Intwisting. We need more guys like this guy.

clipped from www.wired.com But when the pause ends, what follows—no matter how far-fetched—is never a joke. At his first executive board meeting at SAP, a company that had grown dominant by moving slowly and conservatively, Agassi suggested nearly a dozen heretical ideas. He said SAP should give away its hardware and software for free—just charge for IT support. He said SAP should make its database business open source to undermine Oracle. The other board members laughed: The new kid was a cutup! But they stopped when SAP cofounder Hasso Plattner looked around the table and said, "He's the only guy making sense here." Agassi's interest in energy is new. Getting off oil was the key, he decided. But how? He started by looking at cutting energy usage in the home, then moved to a more tempting target: transportation. Was hydrogen the answer? What about embedding power in the street—like slot cars?