“I don’t have an issue with the model, I had a problem with the company,” Agassi said on the sidelines of the Cleantech Investor Summit following a talk he gave on the future of electric vehicle infrastructure.

Agassi’s talk was the first time I’ve seen him speak publicly following his departure from both the board and his CEO role at a company he founded in 2007. He left a rapidly rising career at SAP to tackle the global problem of cars dependent on oil. Agassi wouldn’t speak about the details about what led him to part ways with Better Place and he told the audience he was legally bound not to talk about the situation.

But clearly he and the board — led by Chairman Idan Ofer, who is the single largest shareholder — had different ideas about how to run the company. Ofer is principal of Quantum Pacific Group, which holds the Ofer stake in Israel Corp. Ofer told Israeli publication Globes in late December that “[B]uilding and operating a company are different things, which require different skills. It is ordinary for a founder to leave management in Israel, and Shai Agassi still owns 10 percent of Better Place.”

It’s no secret that the uptake of Better Place cars in Israel, its flagship market, has been slow and losses have been mounting for awhile. The company had a loss of close to $500 million by the end of 2012, and at one point last year Israel Corp held a loss of $160 million. Agassi was replaced with Evan Thornley, CEO of Better Place Australia, but in early January, Thornely himself departed after just three months. Ofer became Executive Chairman, while CFO Alan Gelman stepped in to manage daily operations.

Now Better Place is cutting costs and doubling down on Israel and Denmark. The company made a wide round of layoffs in December, and just this week said it has cut both its U.S. and Australian divisions, in an effort to focus on its Israel and Denmark markets. In late 2012, Better Place also raised another $100 million with much of it coming from Israel Corp.

Agassi said at the end of his talk on Thursday that January numbers for the Israel network actually made him optimistic. Better Place has 0.5 percent of market share in Israeli, which is headed for 0.6 and 0.7 percent, said Agassi. That might not be a lot right now, but that same market share in the U.S. would be the equivalent of 50,000 cars a month, said Agassi.

Even if Better Place can’t make it through the Valley of Death, Agassi thinks battery swapping is the way to go. Eventually, all electric cars will likely have swappable batteries one day, said Agassi.

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Better Place says Idan Ofer, Chairman of the Board, will act as Executive Chairman and manage external relationships and alliances, and Alan Gelman, Global CFO for Better Place, will manage daily operations. According to reports back in October the board of Better Place removed Agassi in the face of mounting losses and a slow uptake of its electric car service in Israel.

Back in October, Better Place had reportedly wracked up losses of $490 million since it was founded, and Israel Corporation, which owns almost a third of the company, held a $160 million loss. Last month Globes, the Israeli business publication, also reported that 140 persons were laid off, and another 150 to 200 could be laid off soon.

Better Place spokesperson Julie Mullins told me last month that Better Place has 800 customers between Israel and Denmark, and the networks are nearly complete. Mullins also says that the company has growing momentum in Australia and a successful taxi program running in Amsterdam.

Better Place recently raised $100 million, in two tranches. In the Better Place release on the CEO change up, the company thanked Thornley for his leadership during the fund raising process. Better Place previously raised more than $750 million, and had raised a round in late August of $50 million loan (€40 million) from European Investment Bank. Investors include GE, UBS, VantagePoint Venture Partners and others.

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The funding news is positive news for Better Place, indicating that the company’s major investor Israel Corp is willing to double down on its investment in the startup despite losses. According to an article in Israeli business paper Globes earlier this month, the Better Place board removed Agassi and replaced him with Evan Thornley, CEO of Better Place Australia, after Better Place wracked up losses of $490 million. As of earlier this month Israel Corp. owned almost a third of the company and held a $160 million loss.

Better Place has already raised more than $750 million, and had just raised a round in late August of $50 million loan (€40 million) from European Investment Bank to finish building out its networks in Denmark and Israel. The roll out of cars in Israel has been slower than expected — NPR reported as of August that 300 cars were sold in Israel, fewer than the company would like.

Better Place spokesperson Julie Mullins told me that in Denmark and Israel, Better Place has 750 customers combined, and that more than half of the infrastructure is deployed in both Israel and Denmark — there’s 24 out of 38 stations operational in Israel and in Denmark 12 out of 18 are operational, said Mullins. On top of that there are 2 to 3 stations being added each week in both countries, she said.

Better Place installs both charging stations and battery swap stations to create a network that enables its users to drive electric cars with the same convenience of gas cars. Better Place partners with utilities and governments in countries to provide subsidies to make the cost of the electric cars to its customers very low, and partners with car companies like Nissan to make the vehicles’ batteries swappable. The customer then pays a subscription service for driving and charging the electric car.

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Agassi will remain on the board and will remain a shareholder in the company. The Globes article also says that Better Place has wracked up losses of $490 million since it was founded, and that Israel Corporation, which owns almost a third of the company, holds a $160 million loss. The President of Israel Corp, Nir Gilad, is quoted in the article from a remark he made in August, saying: “I too would be glad to know when we will start making a profit from Better Place.”

While Better Place clearly needs to start making revenue off of its inaugural network, I think pushing Agassi out will be pretty detrimental to the brand. Agassi was the vision and face of the company.

But as many have reported, the roll out of cars in Israel has been slower than expected. NPR reported as of August that 300 cars were sold in Israel, fewer than the company would like. In late August Better Place raised a $50 million loan (€40 million) from European Investment Bank to finish building out its networks in Denmark and Israel.

Better Place needs a lot of funds to get its networks built out. The company installs both charging stations and battery swap stations to create a network that enables its users to drive electric cars with the same convenience of gas cars. Better Place partners with utilities and governments in countries to provide subsidies to make the cost of the electric cars to its customers very low, and partners with car companies like Nissan to make the vehicles’ batteries swappable. The customer then pays a subscription service for driving and charging the electric car.

Founded in 2007, Better Place raised $200 million in equity just last November, and said at the time the company had a valuation of $2.2 billion. Before its latest loan, Better had raised more than $750 million, from investors including GE, UBS, VantagePoint Venture Partners, and others.

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Update: Better Place sent me the latest numbers for its corporate customers which is 250 companies and a planned 80,000 cars. The company also drove 70 cars in its first weekend drive and delivered 100 cars to customers.

On Better Place’s Facebook page, Agassi said:

Four years ago, we promised the president of Israel, Mr. Shimon Peres, that by today we will have serially produced electric cars that would drive in the streets of Israel. It seemed like an impossible dream. Today we delivered those cars to people who will be driving electric cars daily as their only vehicle. We had to move mountains to get to this day, and we did. Yet we have many more mountains to move.

Here are some of the photos from the event, courtesy of Better Place’s Facebook page:

Better Place’s vision is to sell electric car miles like cellphone minutes, accompanied by a network of chargers and battery swap stations. The company has a partnership with Renault-Nissan and the cars in the Israeli Better Place network are the Fluenz Z.E.

Late last year, Better Place closed yet another round of $200 million in funding that supposedly brought the company’s valuation to $2.25 billion. The Silicon Valley startup has raised more than $750 million, and included new investors GE and UBS in that round.

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Clean power companies trying to build large solar and wind farms in the deserts of the U.S. have long run up against opposition from environmentalists and local residents who don’t want large transmission lines running through protected lands and communities’ backyards. Turns out in Israel, despite its pro-solar stance, and new upcoming nationwide electric car charging network from startup Better Place, is getting caught in that mess, too.

At a meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation in San Francisco this week, I asked Better Place CEO Shai Agassi if his new electric car charging network in Israel, which is launching later this year, was going to utilize clean power. Back in early 2008, when Agassi announced the Israel project, he said in his speech that the grid infrastructure of his network will be powered by “batteries, that get their energy from green sustainable electricity sources.” Israel has an aggressive stance on promoting solar power, including supporting solar hot water heaters.

But Shai said that while he wanted the network to utilize clean power, the transmission lines needed to connect clean power to the grid to power the Better Place network, had hit a stand still after environmentalists had blocked the building of the lines over ground through certain areas. You can read up on some of the back and forth on the solar transmission lines in the Jerusalem Post. Agassi told me he would really like clean power to be part of the Israeli network, but that his hands are tied on the transmission lines right now.

The end result is that it looks like Better Place Israel won’t necessarily be run on clean power anytime soon. A similar situation has occurred for many of the large clean power projects, from Cape Wind, to BrightSource’s Ivanpah project (that one is moving ahead though).

And for some more positive news on Better Place’s Israel network, Agassi says that demand for the cars for Israel’s Better Place network are sold out for at least a year, practically for two years. The company is doing a controlled launch of the Israel network to make sure that nothing happens to degrade the customer experience. Israel is the first launch for Better Place — and essentially the perfect conditions for the company — and the company has to get the launch right, if it’s to succeed in other markets.

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Better Place will build out 40 battery swap stations by the end of this year, and the first nine will be in Hadera, Modi’in, Mahanaim, Mitzpeh Ramon, Be’er Sheva, Yavne, Beit Shean and Bilu Junction. The company says it has 400 agreements with parking lot owners to install thousands of charging stations, and 200 are under construction now.

The best parts of any media hullabaloo are the photos. I grabbed these from a company exec’s flickr feed:

More photos here.

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A web of key players is starting to take shape as entrepreneurs and global corporations race to carve out a piece of the nascent EV market, as government agencies dole out billions of dollars to jump-start that opportunity, as big thinkers churn out innovative ideas and business models based on the intersection of information technology and advanced vehicles, and as the pressure to reduce carbon emissions from vehicles grows. Listed alphabetically, not order of importance, here’s Earth2Tech’s top 15 most influential people in the connected car space.

1. Shai Agassi, Founder and CEO of Better Place
2. George Arnold, National Coordinator for Smart Grid Interoperability, NIST
3. Robin Chase, Founder and CEO of GoLoco.org and Meadow Networks
4. Steven Chu, Secretary of Energy, DOE
5. Mark Duvall, Director of Electric Transportation, Electric Power Research Institute
6. Wan Gang, Minister of Science and Technology, China
7. Carlos Ghosn, CEO of Renault-Nissan
8. Scott Griffith, CEO and Chairman of Zipcar
9. Lisa Jackson, Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency
10. Jon Lauckner, Vice President of Global Product Planning, General Motors
11. Elon Musk, CEO and Chairman of Tesla Motors
12. Fumio Ohtsubo, President of Panasonic Corp.
13. Danilo Santini, Senior Economist, Center for Transportation Research, Argonne National Laboratory
14. Allan Schurr, Vice President of Strategy and Development for Energy & Utilities at IBM
15. Jonathan Silver, Director of the DOE green car loan guarantee and loan programs

Shai Agassi, Founder and CEO of Better Place
Influence: Heading up one of the highest-profile, biggest-budget efforts to build out infrastructure for electric vehicles with an innovative business model.

When former SAP exec Shai Agassi founded Better Place back in 2007, he had one of the most audacious business plans around: Build nationwide networks of battery charging and swap stations for electric vehicles, and sell electric mileage like minutes on a cell phone plan. In the years since, the startup has won over governments and some deep pocketed investors — and helped to put the need for innovative business models and software front and center in discussions about how to deploy large numbers of grid-connected vehicles.

George Arnold, National Coordinator for Smart Grid Interoperability at NIST
Influence: Leading the standards-making process for the smart grid, including standards required for large-scale integration of plug-in vehicles.

Appointed last spring to lead the intensely complex task of developing standards for the smart grid, Arnold joined the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) after more than three decades in the telecom and IT industry (he served as a VP at Lucent Technologies Bell Laboratories, among other firms). Ultimately, the standards emerging from Arnold’s group will shape the basic platform needed to enable widespread adoption of plug-in vehicles and two-way flow of electricity and information between vehicles and the grid.

Robin Chase, Founder and CEO of GoLoco and Meadow Networks, Co-founder and Former CEO of Zipcar
Influence: Developing innovative business models for greener mobility and advancing ideas about how to reinvent the transportation system.

Robin Chase, one of GigaOM’s Top 15 Mobile Influencers, co-founded car sharing startup Zipcar back in 2000. She has since left the company, founding a new venture called GoLoco, which puts social networking to work in the service of carpooling, as well as the transportation consulting firm Meadow Networks. She’s pushing for further reinvention of mobility systems, envisioning ways to dramatically reduce emissions from the transportation sector using open standards and wireless mesh networks.

Steven Chu, Secretary of Energy
Influence: Overseeing national energy directives and allocation of federal funds for advanced vehicle technology.

Secretary Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist and former administrator of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, said in his confirmation hearing more than a year ago, “These first electric hybrid cars don’t have the energy capacity and the battery lifetime we need…Let’s push hard towards more fuel-efficient personal vehicles.” As energy chief, he has done just that, helping to get long-delayed funds (as well as a heap of new cash from the stimulus package) flowing out for projects across the spectrum of energy tech for connected vehicles, next-gen battery materials and smart charging systems for electric vehicles.

Mark Duvall, Director of Electric Transportation, Electric Power Research Institute
Influence: Overseeing partnerships and collaborations with electric utilities, automotive companies, government agencies, national laboratories and research institutions.

The non-profit Electric Power Research Institute, or EPRI, is the “glue” between the utility and auto industries — that’s how CalCars.org founder Felix Kramer put it to us — and Mark Duvall is at the center of EPRI’s activities related to electric transportation and infrastructure. A mechanical engineer by training, Duvall held the post of Principal Development Engineer at the University of California, Davis Hybrid Electric Vehicle Center before joining EPRI. These days he’s focused on projects including plug-in hybrid demos, advanced battery system development, charging infrastructure, analysis of greenhouse gas emissions from plug-in vehicle tech.

Wan Gang, Minister of Science and Technology, China
Influence: Promoting electric vehicle manufacturing and purchasing in China, the world’s largest auto market.

Since taking the helm of China’s Science and Technology Ministry in April 2007, former Audi engineer Wan Gang has helped lead the country’s charge to “leapfrog” the world’s leading automakers when it comes to hybrid and electric vehicles.

For several years starting in 2000, Wan coordinated through Tongji University a nationwide research program for electric (and hydrogen) vehicle technology development. And last spring, when Wan and other top officials outlined incentives and policies designed to make China the world’s largest electric car producer, he explained the move as a key component of the country’s environmental goals — and competitiveness on international markets.

Carlos Ghosn, CEO of Renault-Nissan
Influence: Investing €4 billion ($5.62 billion) in a zero-emissions mobility program, launching a full line-up of plug-in vehicles.

“We are convinced that the mass availability of affordable zero-emission vehicles is the most significant breakthrough our industry could deliver,” Ghosn (on our GigaOM Pro list of Green IT Winners and Losers of 2009, sub. req’d) proclaimed in mid-2008, “and, together with Renault, Nissan intends to be the breakthrough leader.”

The French-Japanese alliance’s first battery electric vehicle, the LEAF — equipped with an onboard transmitting unit connected through mobile networks to a global data center — won’t launch until later this year. But Ghosn’s strategy may provide cues for other automakers. Under his direction, Renault-Nissan has directed a pile of cash into the technology, partnered with battery makers as well as utilities and started looking at battery leasing and recycling as keys to affordable electric cars.

Scott Griffith, Chairman and CEO of Zipcar
Influence: Leading the world’s largest car sharing network.

Few companies have done as much to put the notion of networked vehicles into practice at the scale and speed of Zipcar, the world’s largest car-sharing network. Griffith, who took on the chief executive role in 2003, has steered the company through a 2007 merger with top competitor Flexcar, overseas expansion, the launch of a software-as-service business unit (for fleet management) and to the company’s current status as the world’s largest car sharing network, with an initial public offering reportedly in sight.

Griffith has told us that while the company doesn’t plan to go all-electric anytime soon, he sees Zipcar as “a terrific early platform” for electric vehicles. After all, the startup has a few things electric automakers, utilities and charging infrastructure companies need: a large consumer fleet and mass of data about driving patterns and vehicle status. Each car in the Zipcar fleet has a custom circuit board, processor, and modem that receive data over AT&T’s wireless network and allow remote monitoring. (See “Location-Based Services: From Mobile to Mobility,” on GigaOM Pro, sub. req’d).

Lisa Jackson, Administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency
Influence: Overseeing agency that will develop vehicle emissions standards and new fuel economy rating system for alt-fuel vehicles.

“When it comes to the auto industry, the EPA apparently is the Emissions Permissions Agency,” Jackson said, back in 2007, of the agency she would later come to lead. The EPA under the leadership of Jackson (and the Obama administration), however, has changed course. In December 2009 the EPA issued a ruling that greenhouse gases endanger human health, paving the way to the first regulation of emissions from vehicles and other sources by the EPA.

In addition to helping to shape the regulatory environment for lower-emission and more fuel efficient vehicles, Jackson’s EPA is developing a new system for plug-in vehicle fuel economy ratings– already shaping up to be a competitive marketing point for electric car makers.

Jon Lauckner, Vice President of Global Product Planning for General Motors
Influence: Co-creator of the Chevy Volt.

Lauckner’s a company man — he’s been at General Motors since 1979. Appointed to VP of global program management in 2005, Lauckner is credited as one of the founding fathers (along with Vice Chairman Bob Lutz) of the extended-range electric Chevy Volt, due out later this year, and he has overseen its development. The vehicle  – intended to help restore GM’s image as a technological leader — represents one of the first serious attempts by the Big Three to launch a plug-in vehicle for the consumer market (after the EV-1), and the automaker has reportedly invested a billion dollars or more on the project. As Lauckner said in an interview with BNET, “Whether you are a supporter of the Volt or not, you have to acknowledge that it has changed the conversation.”

Elon Musk, CEO and Chairman of Tesla Motors
Influence: Funding and later leading the only company selling a highway-capable electric car in the U.S.

For all its delays, detours, financial hurdles and legal distractions, startup Tesla Motors has stuck around for seven years, launching in 2008 what’s still the only highway-capable all-electric vehicle in the country: the high-end Roadster sports car, which deserves more than a little credit for changing public perception of electric vehicles.

Musk invested in the startup early on, and took over the chief executive role in late 2008. Last year, the company won a federal vote of confidence when it snagged one of the first conditional loan commitments under the DOE’s Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing program to help Tesla deliver a long-promised mid-range electric sedan.

Fumio Ohtsubo, President of Panasonic Corp.
Influence: Controlling world’s largest rechargeable battery maker, developing HD-PLC system for integrating electric vehicle data into home network via standard outlets.

Already Toyota’s joint venture partner for hybrid battery production, Panasonic has embarked on a campaign to bolster its energy storage business and become a heavyweight player in the world of electric cars. As of early January (when Tesla announced a development deal with the electronics giant), Panasonic was around the halfway point in what it expects to be a $1 billion investment over three years in facilities for lithium-ion cell research, development and production.

Late last year, it bought a controlling stake in Sanyo, the world’s largest rechargeable battery maker. And as a result of the move, the company is poised to be at the leading edge of an industry shakeup, analysts told Bloomberg, in which “the auto and electronics industries fuse,” and Panasonic/Sanyo’s dominance gives it “more bargaining power” over car companies as they develop electric vehicles. The firm also has a role to play beyond batteries when it comes to connected cars: Panasonic unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this year an HD-PLC system (High Definition Powerline Communications) meant to enable integration of electric vehicle data into a home network via standard outlets.

Danilo Santini, Senior Economist, Center for Transportation Research at Argonne National Laboratory
Influence: Producing evaluations of the market potential for plug-in vehicles and quantitative analysis used for development and refinement of regulatory structures related to advanced vehicles.

Santini has served since 2001 as the Department of Energy’s primary technical representative for the U.S. to the International Energy Agency Implementing Agreement on Hybrid and Electric Vehicles. He’s worked for more than 35 years at the Argonne National Laboratory — where energy storage is one of three core research areas, and which often licenses tech to corporations – focusing for the most part on energy and environmental tech. When policymakers or business leaders face decisions related to batteries, plug-in vehicles and hybrids, Santini’s numbers offer a widely respected point of reference — he’s written or contributed to more than 150 reports, articles and conference papers.

Allan Schurr, Vice President of Strategy and Development for Energy & Utilities at IBM
Influence: Spearheading IBM’s work with utilities to implement smart grid technologies and integrate plug-in vehicles.

A veteran of the utility and meter industries (he held posts at both PG&E and Itron), Schurr is now responsible for computing giant IBM’s market strategy, regulatory policy and partnerships with global utilities. He also heads up the firm’s involvement with smart grid legislation, and its work with automakers, researchers and utilities that are building out the smart grid and readying for an influx of demand from plug-in vehicles. For IBM, a spokesperson put it simply to us, “anything EV-related” basically goes through Schurr.

Jonathan Silver, Executive Director of the Department of Energy Loan Guarantee Program
Influence: Heading up the DOE’s potentially king-making $25 billion green car loan program and $32 billion loan guarantee program.

The Obama administration named Silver, a former venture capitalist with Washington, D.C.-based Core Capital Partners, to head up the Department of Energy’s highly competitive loan guarantee program and green car loan program in November 2009. His task? Overseeing the application process, analysis and negotiation for loans and guarantees, as well as staffing — and working to streamline the agency’s operations. At the head of a program that will pick winners and losers in the electric car race, Silver is kingmaker in chief (at least for the short term: see “How EV Battery Startups Can Cross the Valley of Death,” on GigaOM Pro, sub. req’d).

Photos: Danilo Santini courtesy of Iowa State University; Elon Musk courtesy of Flickr user jurvetson; Allan Schurr courtesy of U.S. House of Representatives; Robin Chase credit robinchase.org; all others courtesy of the companies or agencies.

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“There’s not a lot of policy that is required from governments, but the signal, the importance, ‘we’d like this thing to happen,’ is critical. It’s amazing what a galvanized shared vision does to a political body.”

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Verizon Hanging up on iPhone? (Computerworld) — That’s the sentiment now that Google and Verizon are buddy-buddy after this week’s announcement. The thought is that it simply doesn’t make sense to make a CMDA iPhone for Verizon when they’re moving towards the same LTE network platform as AT&T. I tend to agree with IDC on this one, but not just for the technology reason. I’m thinking that Verizon will push the coverage and quality of their network along with the more open nature of Android. Essentially, they’ll say “iPhone owners, the phone is only as good as its network, so when you’re ready for a comparable phone that doesn’t drop calls or choke on 3G usage, let us know.”

N900 gets a sneak peak at Maemo Summit (UMPC Portal) — Steve Paine spent an hour with Nokia’s newest future handset and I always like a hands-on opinion when I can find one for a device. I’ve mentioned this smartphone quite a bit of late, but that’s because Nokia’s smartphone future might depend on it and the operating system.

Google makes it easier to find things (Google Mobile) — Owners of webOS, Android or Apple handsets can find new search features in Google today. At the top right of your search results, you’ll see an Options link. This is similar to the one found on the full web, although slightly more limited due to space. With one tap, you can filter mobile search results by time of publication, images, forums or reviews. Every time I turn around, Google makes the mobile experience more like the desktop experience. That consistency — regardless of device — continues to be one of their strengths.

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