Better Place coming to Ontario
Seems the talks I reported on last summer between the Ontario government and Better Place have proven fruitful. Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty and auto industry officials, as well as Better Place’s Shai Agassi, will host a conference call/press conference at 10:30 a.m. (EST) in Toronto this morning to discuss a new partnership with Better Place. This adds Ontario to a list that includes Denmark, Israel, Australia and California.
Details to come, but for background here’s a story I wrote for the Toronto Star back in September.
UPDATE: A few bullet points from Better Place’s announcement…
- It appears to be a symbolic commitment. Very early days. No money has changed hands, though there has been handshakes.
- Better Place will set up its Canadian head office in Ontario.
- It will also establish an electric vehicle demonstration and education centre in Toronto.
- The government will do a comprehensive study, to be released in May, that will look at ways to accelerate the manufacture and deployment of electric vehicles.
- Better Place will at the same time come up with a charging-network plan and estimated timeline for building it out. This will also, presumably, estimate costs.
- Toronto-based “green electricity” retailer Bullfrog Power has partnered with Better Place as its electricity provider, though it’s unclear where this partnership will actually lead.
I’ll be writing a more detailed story for the Toronto Star, so check back for the link tomorrow.
Tags: Add new tag, Better Place, electric cars, Shai Agassi
Tyler Hamilton is editor-in-chief of Corporate Knights magazine and a business columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper. In addition to this Clean Break blog, Tyler writes a weekly column of the same name that discusses trends, happenings and innovators in the clean technology and green energy market. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005. It is not an official blog of the newspaper.
January 15th, 2009 at 8:31 pm
Hearing the Premier on the radio talking up the Better Place idea was a shocking confirmation that this Provincial leadership does not value/appreciate/support the innovation that is here in Ontario, and in Canada. Your blog has a list of cool canadian innovators, and our Premier should not have to go further than this list, and many other emerging companies that will be part of this list, to find his inspiration that our own better future is already in our hands. Why do I have to hear our Premier publicly promote a US funded emerging company, when so many entrepreneurs here at home have been beating their heads on government doors for years, and years? I have been involved in energy technology innovation here in Ontario since 1999, and it is a shame to see how our Premier choses to spend his time on innovation.
November 11th, 2009 at 7:00 am
Sounds like this is an excellent thing and that things are going to be looking up and changes will be happening for Ontario