(For other news from the Reuters Global Environment Summit, click on http://www.reuters.com/summit/GlobalEnvironment08?pid=500) By Gerard Wynn LONDON, Oct 8 (Reuters) - Plummeting car sales, climate change, high oil prices and the threat of global recession. The answer? Free electric cars. So says the founder of California-based electric car operator Better Place, Shai Agassi. "Do you want a $40,000 car, a $20,000 car or drive this car off the lot for free?" he asks. His question compares the rough cost of a new hybrid electric car such as the proposed General Motors Corp <GM.N> Chevrolet Volt, an economy conventional gas-driven car, and his proposed contract to buy a pure electric car. Better Place is a $200 million-backed venture to install the electric power network to charge electric cars, whether at home, at work or on the road at the equivalent of today's filling stations. Agassi calculates the present running cost of a pure electric car at some 7 cents per mile compared with about 35 cents to run on gasoline -- contrasting the dual cost of electricity plus battery with the cost of gasoline. That price difference is the source of his teaser. Agassi reckons he can offer to buyers of electric cars a contract whereby if they pay the same per month as they would to run a gasoline car, the dealer could keep some of the difference in running costs -- which would be enough to cover the vehicle purchase. In that way pure electric cars could leapfrog gasoline-electric hybrids in the pipeline or already in use, such as the Toyota Prius, said Agassi, as a cheaper alternative to beat plummeting car sales and in a race to find oil alternatives. The concept is to install uniform electric car charging points at designated parking lots in residential areas and workplaces. In addition, to allow longer drives, the company would roll out electric filling stations. But it is still in a very early phase. "We're in the process of going through a series of tests of installing our charge spots, about 1,000 of them in about 50 different prototype parking lots," said 40-year old Agassi. "We're (planning) installing 500,000 spots across Israel by mid-2011." RECESSION Major automakers last week reported plunging U.S. sales for September, led by a 34 percent slide at Ford Motor Co <F.N>, as an escalating credit crisis hit the slumping industry. The Better Place alternative approach will not come cheap. The total infrastructure cost would work out at about $500-$1,000 per car, in what Agassi estimates as a $7 trillion global auto market, including gasoline and services consumption. "In some countries it will be in the billions. In the U.S. it would be $100 billion to do the whole country -- that's two months of oil imports into the United States." "It's the best way to get out of recession, you do big private sector infrastructure projects." The company now wants carmakers to build electric cars that will be compatible with the charge spots it has designed. "Renault <RENA.PA>, Nissan were the first ones to sign up, to agree, to build these cars. They're not just prototypes, they're saying by this date we'll have a city car, a sedan, an SUV. They shared a line up and said all these cars will come up between 2010 and 2014 in volume, mass production." Better Place closed funding from investors Israel Corp., Morgan Stanley <MS.N> and VantagePoint earlier this year. It plans to roll out its concept in Israel first and then in Denmark, where it has an agreement for an investment and technical partnership with Danish oil firm and utility DONG Energy, said Agassi. (For summit blog: http://summitnotebook.reuters.com/)
French scientists Francoise Barre-Sinoussi (L) and Luc Montagnier pose for the media during a news conference at the UNESCO's headquarters in Paris October 8, 2008. Two French scientists who discovered the ...
