Shai Agassi

"How do you run an entire country without oil, with no new science, without government assistance, and in a time frame that's fast enough to get off oil before we run out of planet?" The answer, 41-year-old Shai Agassi says, is electric cars. He's not alone in his enthusiasm, but he may well have the most ambitious vision: battery-powered cars made by Renault-Nissan, a network of charging stations, and cell-phone-like pricing schemes. This may turn out to be more a creative sally than a killer app, but he's changing the conversation; Australia, Denmark, Israel, Canada, California's Bay Area, and Hawaii have signed on as beta testers.