Denmark was the second country to sign up. As Agassi points out, Denmark is a net exporter of oil, not an importer and it has cited environmental reasons as its primary motive for getting involved. “Nobody likes to pay out US$128 for a barrel of oil because of trade balance reasons,” says Agassi. “It destroys the economy, any economy, when you have such outwards wealth transfer.”

As well as installing a 500,000-strong recharging point network in Israel – meaning that, on average, one in six parking spaces will be plugged in – Project Better Place is also investing in several hundred battery exchange points, located in gas stations. The idea is that a driver could drive into the garage and refuel simply by swapping an dead battery for a charged one. At potentially less than three minutes per exchange, these will be an easy enabler for longer journeys. Renault-Nissan is designing the car to facilitate this.

The whole transaction, car purchase included, will be arranged on a mobile telephone-type contract. This means that drivers will sign up to a maximum distance they will drive each month, and thus how much electricity they will need. If they sign up for a long enough time period – which, according to Agassi is likely to be between four and six years – they will get the car thrown in ‘free-of-charge’.

Agassi has all of the answers when it comes to the implications for general energy usage. “If you take any country and convert it from oil to electric, you add around 6% electricity demand onto the grid, most of which comes at off-peak hours. We have studies that show that if 84% of the US’s 200 million cars converted to electric, the grid would be able to support all of those cars, without a single additional power plant.” That just shows, he says, how much excess capacity there is, especially off-peak. In fact, Agassi says, the adoption of EVs will actually help the situation because the grid will be able to discharge small amounts of energy from the car batteries at peak usage times. Furthermore, Project Better Place has pledged to invest in local renewable energy generation whenever it signs up a new market. In Israel this is solar, in Denmark it is wind power.

Though Project Better Place is contractually allowed to work with other carmakers and Renault-Nissan is contractually allowed to work with other network providers and utility companies, this is one area that both sides refuse to give any details of, lest potential future relationships are damaged. However, Agassi’s ambitions seem limitless and if he’s to be believed, then he’s a man in demand. “We’re in conversations with countries in every continent in the world. When we started this back in early 2007, we approached all of the major carmakers through President Peres’ office. Only two companies responded to our invitation and one of those was Renault- Nissan. Since the announcement, we have been approached by pretty much every large carmaker in the world.”