DAVOS, Switzerland » Electric car pioneer Shai Agassi is a man with a startling prediction: Before 2020, he says, more people everywhere will be buying electric cars than those powered by gasoline.

"It doesn’t mean that oil is not necessary, but we’re starting the way out," said Agassi, a former top executive for information giant SAP AG who launched his Better Place venture several years ago.

Existing electric cars have a limited range, after which owners have to stop and wait for hours while their car’s battery recharges. Owners of Agassi’s cars would be able to remove the used battery and replace it with a fully charged one, allowing them to get back on the road almost immediately.

The first country slated to go live with a network of "battery-switching" stations run by Better Place is his native Israel, where he plans a launch — with 56 stations and an expected 5,000 cars — before the end of 2011. In 2012, Denmark and Australia are expected to join, along with trials in Hawaii and in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Brimming with infectious optimism, Agassi has been a regular at the World Economic Forum, where he was interviewed by The Associated Press.

Agassi said he has raised about $700 billion and spent about a third of it, mostly on setting up the stations. That leaves enough cash to absorb losses while he builds up to break even, which Agassi asserts will not take long.

"In Israel in 2016, plus or minus a year, more electric cars will be sold than gasoline cars. When that happens in country one, within two years you will see it in every country," he said.

That claim might seem preposterous for the car-crazy United States — but not for Israel. The country’s electric company also expects electric cars to achieve a significant market share in the near future and is preparing its grid to meet the demand, according to the Haaretz newspaper.

Former President Bill Clinton has emerged a believer as well.

"Israel will become the first country in the world to put 100,000 all-electric cars on the road," he said yesterday. "Not the U.S., not China, not countries much bigger — Israel!"

Agassi has found a niche created by a widespread sense that the world is not doing half enough to deal with the eventual end of oil — a prospect hastened by the explosive recent growth in the developing world.

He plans to sell cars being developed by Renault SA and equipped with removable batteries — which are currently quite heavy and have a range of 100 miles. Drivers would be promised four battery swapping stations along any route the length of the range.

Although prices have not yet been set, Agassi said the idea would be that the consumer would not pay more to drive a given distance than its current cost using oil.