During the era of the Space Race, the popular conception of the 21st century was one of flying cars, moon colonies and robot butlers. Next year will mark 40 years since man first walked on the moon- we stopped going there in 1972, and I’m still waiting on my robot butler and my flying car. The modern car runs on essentially the same technology as it has for a century. Shai Agassi thinks it’s time for the 2nd century of the car industry to commence, and he (and his company Better Place) are working to make that happen, leading the way towards clean-green transportation technologies.

Agassi, who has an impressive track record for shepherding successful innovation and has made a fortune as a software entrepreneur, believes the greatest obstacle for green transportation is infrastructure. Scientists, auto makers and consumers will never commit themselves to the electric car without the necessary network of supporting technologies. As he explains, “the ability to drive [an electric car] is not limited by the battery or range of the car. It’s limited  by the range of deployment of the infrastructure.” In other words, just as owning a car that runs on unleaded gas wouldn’t make sense without roads on which to drive that car and gas stations at which to refuel, investing in electric car technology without developing the necessary infrastructure doesn’t make sense. With that in mind, Better Place and its partners are investing hundreds of millions of dollars in building electric-vehicle networks powered by renewable energy to give consumers an affordable, sustainable alternative for personal mobility. Development is under way to build these ‘electric highway networks’ in Israel, Denmark and now Australia. Better Place has an existing partnership with The Renault-Nissan Alliance, one of the world’s leading developers of the electric car, but the company is committed to open network access and leverages industry standards, allowing consumers to have a choice of make and model. Better Place expects the first mass market EV models to be available in Australia by the 2012 model year, a year after its mass market launch in Israel and Denmark.

In Australia, a country of 15 million cars (the world’s 7th highest per capita car ownership, ahead of car-crazy countries like the United States and the United Kingdom), Better Place has partnered with Australian bank Macquarie and AGL Energy Ltd to begin building up the infrastructure in Australia’s urban centers (beginning with Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane) and then connect them with so-called ’switch stations’ (recharging centers) every 25 miles. Spurred on by a $500 million investment from the Australian government to promote development and encourage innovation in the auto industry, the Better Place experiment Down Under will be a giant leap into the 2nd century of the automobile. We’ll following closely!