Electric Car Startup 'Better Place' Liquidating After $850 Million Investment

awaissoft writes "Better Place hoped to transform the energy industry with electric cars and battery switching stations. Better Place wanted to make the world a better place by replacing gas stations with battery switching stations that would remove the driving mileage limitations from electric cars and eventually rid the world of fossil-fuel burning vehicles. But after six years and burning through $850 million, the company is filing for liquidation in an Israeli court. As reported by the Associated Press, Better Place's Board of Directors issued a written statement Sunday announcing that the company was winding down."

Comments

Winding down?

[Anonymous Coward]

Winding, as in electric motor coils?

Re:Winding down?

[crutchy]

i'm sure they're going to a Better Place

Will Tesla buy them?

[haruchai]

Since Elon has said that the Model S ( and presumably the Model X) is capable of conversion to battery swap, perhaps Tesla will try to get the Better Place switch station tech - despite the company's failure, they did have solid working tech as Tesla could benefit tremendously by not having to reinvent, er, the wheel.

Re:Will Tesla buy them?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would he bother? He has a successful company, why would he want to buy a company that burned through that much money with no noticeable product. Their business model was obviously flawed.

Battery swap is fraught with difficulties, to make it easy you lose capacity/safety, if you don't make it easy, it takes too long (a Tesla supercharger takes 1/2 hour). Also, the stations that you set up to swap the batteries have to have a lot of batteries on hand if your business is successful, this is a significant investment.

The model S and Model X use the same battery packs, and yes they are swappable, but from what I can see, they are designed to be swapped at end of life, not at end of current charge, they form an integral part of the vehicle. (Elon correct me if I am wrong.)

Re:Will Tesla buy them?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hello, you are wrong.

Regards,

--- Elon

Re:Will Tesla buy them?

[cheater512]

What magical technology do you need to swap batteries?
People have been swapping AA's for decades just fine.

Re:Will Tesla buy them?

[Vanderhoth]

I'm under the impression that car batteries are extremely heavy, and often put in very in accessible locations because they take up a lot of space in the vehicle. So It might be ok to swap the battery out once a year when it's up on a lift, but not really practical to swap it out every couple of weeks/days.

Re:Will Tesla buy them?

[Vanderhoth]

I'm sure most people will get the context, but I should have specified when I said car batteries I meant in the context of an electric car, not the standard batteries used in gas powered cars today.

Re:Will Tesla buy them?

[Anonymous Coward]

Will the real Elon Musk please stand up?

-E. Musk

Re:Will Tesla buy them?

[xQx]

Agree that you wouldn't buy the company, but it would make a lot of sense for them to take or buy the idea.
I really think Better Place failed because they were unable to reach critical mass - not because they had a flawed product.

The issue for all battery powered cars is 1/2 an hour charge is an eternity. I sometimes travel 800kms a day in my gas powered car, there is no way I could use an expensive Tesla S to replace that yet. Despite what Elon says, I don't have 1/2 hour to waste every 400kms to sit at a high-powered charge station and drink coffee, and I can't see all my customers having high-powered charge stations out the front of their buildings for me to be able to charge the car while meeting with them. Furthermore, unless there are major advancements made in room-temperature superconducting, the losses involved in fast-charging are always greater than a trickle charge. If all you need to do is swap the batteries, the charge-time becomes far less important. (Still important when you do a volume of cars, because you need more batteries in reserve)

Look at the video of a Better Place battery swap: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5b0T5NUHyxs - It's just as fast and even easier than filling your car with petrol. Having these scattered around the country would eliminate the "range anxiety" that is plaguing Tesla. The key issue is that you need to have enough cars using the change-station to pay for the batteries that need to lie there in wait. The other exciting thing that better place had working was that by the fully automated nature of this station, autonomous taxies could drive themselves in, swap over, and drive away all without a driver.

Making the cost model work is actually dead easy. I'm not sure if you have Swap & Go BBQ gas bottles in America & Europe, but here in Australia it's entirely replaced the 'take your 9kg gas bottle to the service station and have it filled' model that used to be common. Basically you pay a fixed fee for each change over. If that doesn't work (financially) you charge an annual rental + a swapover fee.

Communal Batteries make sense. You essentially move from a 1+1 model for battery swap, to an n+1 model. It also amortizes the cost of replacing a battery over it's entire life, reducing 'bill shock' for electric car owners.

What Telsa, Nissan, and Ford & Holden could learn from Better Place is even if they keep their proprietary battery packs for each model car, if they can agree on a standard that allows the battery to be removed and replaced vertically from the bottom of the car by a machine accessible scissor lift, the electric car will have a better future.

Re:Will Tesla buy them?

[catchblue22]

The issue for all battery powered cars is 1/2 an hour charge is an eternity. I sometimes travel 800kms a day in my gas powered car

Fair enough, but you are in the minority.

Re:Will Tesla buy them?

[haruchai]

Have a look at the battery swap station action:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtO3BxnMoAs

Re:Will Tesla buy them?

[careysub]

Why would he bother? He has a successful company, why would he want to buy a company that burned through that much money with no noticeable product."

Let's see: according TFA -
"...about 1,000 Better Place cars are on the roads ..." and
"Sunday’s announcement left many questions unanswered, especially what will happen to its cars and charging stations. Better Place has also installed a network of stations in Denmark and has operations in Australia, the Netherlands, China, Hawaii and Japan."
And according to Wikipedia: "By mid September 2012, there were 21 operational battery-swap stations open to the public in Israel".

That may not be excessively impressive, but 1000 cars in operation, 21 charging stations in Israel, and others in six other nations is not "no noticeable product."

Re:Will Tesla buy them?

[CodeBuster]

Elon has said that the Model S ( and presumably the Model X) is capable of conversion to battery swap

Capable? Yes, it could probably be done. Will it be done? No. Elon is a smart man and he knows how to say the right things to the right audience to get what he wants. However, as a practical matter the Model S already has difficulty competing with fossil fuel powered vehicles on range and even then only by making the batteries fully integrated components molded into every bit of spare room in the vehicle frame. Any additional batteries, removable or not, would further reduce either cargo or interior seating. Musk has done a better job than Fisker and others, but what has he achieved? At $60,000+ (the actual price with options that a typical luxury car buyer would want is closer to $80,000) this still isn't a car for the everyman. In fact it's more like an alternative to the S class Mercedes for limousine liberals who want to appear green using our green (aka money). Tell me again why my tax dollars should be subsidizing Musk and Tesla?

Re:Will Tesla buy them?

[CodeBuster]

but it would make a lot of sense for them to take or buy the idea.

What's to take or buy? A removable battery isn't exactly a revolutionary idea and neither is having a supply of them on hand to facilitate on demand swapping. It's more like an obvious technical consideration for anyone designing and building electric vehicles and their associated infrastructure.

if they can agree on a standard that allows the battery to be removed and replaced vertically from the bottom of the car by a machine accessible scissor lift, the electric car will have a better future.

As it is we cannot even get European and American car makers to agree what side of the vehicle to place the gas cap on in our fossil fuel vehicles and you want them to standardize the location, size and method of battery replacement? I suppose we'll just have to wait until we can all get to that "Better Place", wherever that is.

Re: Will Tesla buy them?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because if he succeedes then we are closer to having green cars for the masses. We cannot massify electric cars until the market is proven.

Re:Will Tesla buy them?

[CodeBuster]

People have been swapping AA's for decades just fine.

Sure, but have you noticed how much extra space is required to accommodate the battery bay with springs and contact plates? Why do you suppose that Apple chose to use integrated batteries soldered directly onto circuit boards, hardly the model of accessibility? The answer of course is space. In the case of the iPhone they were trying to make the device thin and light enough to fit comfortably into your shirt pocket. In the case of a vehicle, the more space that's taken up by vehicle systems, including batteries of fuel tanks, the less space there is for passengers and cargo. It's a trade-off and you don't get swappable batteries without sacrificing either seating or cargo space.

Re:Will Tesla buy them?

[Spoke]

Exactly. For 800 km/day (500 miles), your typical gas car will need to be fueled anywhere from 1-2 times depending on the car (typical gas cars might go 200-450 miles between fillups). Typical fuel stop might take 15 minutes at best assuming you also need to stop, use the restroom, grab a drink/snack, etc. A Model S with 200 miles range between SuperChargers will also need to be filled 2 times - but you'll need about 90 minutes of charging, or about 60-75 minutes longer than a gas car.

A 500 mile trip, you may travel 70 mph while on the road, so lets say 7 hours of driving. The gas car might take about 7.5 hours including stops at best, a Tesla might take up to 8.5 hours.

Is that extra hour hour or so going to kill that occasional trip? Highly doubtful, but if it is, I suggest that a plug-in hybrid like the Chevy Volt might be a much better fit for that type of use.

Re:Will Tesla buy them?

[petermgreen]

Humans are very good at quickly getting objects in and out of awkward spaces but only if those objects are fairly light. Your AA batteries are no problem for even a small child to handle. The starter batteries for petrol powered cars are getting towards the limit of what one person can easily and safely handle.

Afaict an electric car battery is of the order of half a ton. Getting something that weight in and out quickly while also keeping it in a place that is sheilded from crashes and doesn't mess with the praciticality or aerodynamics of the car is a much trickier proposition than dealing with a few AAs.

Re: Will Tesla buy them?

[CodeBuster]

Because if he succeedes then we are closer to having green cars for the masses. We cannot massify electric cars until the market is proven.

The market will decide when that happens and it will happen as soon as it becomes economically competitive and not before. I'm extremely skeptical of spending limited tax dollars, which are desperately needed elsewhere, in vain attempts to speed that process along. If the market isn't doing something it should be a signal that the technology isn't ready yet because if it was somebody would come in and making a killing disrupting the existing fossil fuel infrastructure. That alone should be sufficient incentive for work to continue on alternatives. Having the government jump in prematurely as an unsophisticated investor can actually harm progress by encouraging waste and fraud and disrupting the normal investment process whereby worthy companies are funded while charlatans are not.

Re:Will Tesla buy them?

[You're All Wrong]

You mean "why do you suppose Apple chose to use removable batteries with sprung contacts, just like everyone else, but just decided to make them not user-accessible?"
Iphone 5: http://d3nevzfk7ii3be.cloudfront.net/igi/1jBGUWWIjGsgARsP.medium
Iphone 4: http://d3nevzfk7ii3be.cloudfront.net/igi/iXGZBiPeKlbacnen.medium

Re:Will Tesla buy them?

[citizenr]

make a lot of sense ....to buy the idea.

You must be an American (or retarded).
Ideas are dime a dozen.

Re:Will Tesla buy them?

[symbolset]

Battery swap is the right answer to the recharge time problem until we get supercapacitor tech. Elon doesn't need to buy this company to make that happen. Even if he did, their patents will be available at firesale prices. Musk is wary though, as white kid brought up in South Africa without the benefit of wealth and power ought to be. He's made much of himself and I can't wait to see how much more he achieves. He's the ultimate Cinderella story.

This company ("Better Place") was a shell engineered to fail from the beginning to suck up federal electric vehicle dollars. That was its purpose, and it did it well. Its closure is a victory to the people behind it as these dollars didn't go to something useful. What is the purpose of putting battery swap stations on tiny Hawaiian islands where you can't drive a vehicle farther than its charge time before you hit the ocean? It is to prove that the battery swap thing is not economically viable in a use case where nobody in their right mind would use it. If you can't run out your vehicle's basic charge making three laps around the island, you don't need a battery swap so battery swap stations are redundant. An investigation into the genesis of "Better Place" will probably find at least some connections to BP, Exxon and so on. Many Senators knew the nature of this company, and pushed it anyway knowing their votes went to waste.

I'm really sad that legislative action can get this bad before people start to do something about it - and I think it must get much worse before we actually do.

Once upon a time I'd hunt down and finger the federal reprobate responsible for approving this, but I'm old and tired. You do it if you still care.

Re:Will Tesla buy them?

[XNormal]

Why would he bother? He has a successful company, why would he want to buy a company that burned through that much money with no noticeable product

As a slashdotter, we are prone to having a bias of looking at everything as a technology development issue. But Better Place was an infrastructure project. They tried to minimize the development of any new technology. And infrastructure requires Big Money. Unfortunately, it was Big Money with the risk profile of a technology development startup. Ouch.

Re:Will Tesla buy them?

[Cenan]

This company ("Better Place") was a shell engineered to fail from the beginning to suck up federal electric vehicle dollars.

What federal dollars? Why the fuck would the feds fund battery swap stations in Denmark? (Better Place filed for bankruptcy Sunday afternoon here). Better Place gambled on electrical cars being much more popular than they turned out to be, as the CEO said "it was all about timing".

So now we have a network of swapping stations and nobody to run them. Filing for bankruptcy now was smart, that way the stations can be re-sold to someone else and the losses gets shoveled onto the investors - as opposed to having to close some of them down and sell them off as scrap, making even bigger holes in the grid.

For the future of electric cars, this was the best of the worst outcomes.

Re:Will Tesla buy them?

[sturle]

You sometimes travel 800km a day in your car. How often is that?

I travel more than 500km sometimes as well. Perhaps six times a year. And frankly I don't think I ever drove 800km without taking a half an hour break for some food and life preserving coffee. (Not to mention the kids, who needs food and toilet breaks more often than me. And coffee. Especially my two year old boy. I should stop serving them coffee, but it is probably better than sugary drinks..)

To me the convenience of waking up to a fully charged car every morning, and the slight inconvenience of 6 half hour breaks at fast charging stations every year, beats about 30 trips to the gas station every year. By a large margin. Fast charging is fast enough for me, and more convenient than battery swapping.

Battery life is not a problem any more. The battery in a Tesla Model S lasts longer than the engine in a typical gasoline powered car. Nobody worries about the cost of changing the engine after 250000-300000 km when they buy a new gasoline powered car, so why worry about a battery which only gets cheaper and cheaper and with ever improving capacity?

Let this company fail. If we keep improving battery technology at the same pace as now, replaceable batteries for cars will be an obsolete idea in a few years.

Re:Will Tesla buy them?

[symbolset]

I guess you missed the point that the US Federal government subsidized this operation with loan guarantees.

Why is a different thing I can't answer. I don't know why. Apparently you have the interest and energy to investigate the matter.

Re:Will Tesla buy them?

[Anonymous Coward]

My (and most people out here in europe, in fact in the US too) use of the car is about 150km per day. These are around 95% of days I use my car. The days I drive more and usually long road-trip style vacations. I know plenty of people who would take my Model S in trade for their gasoline luxury car for a week or two. After the swap they tend to look very differently at the electric car too. Wouldn't surprise me if half of them are driving one in a few years when they trade in their old car. In addition, many leasing companies offer electric car drivers 3-4 weeks per year of gasoline trade-ins.

The key flaw in stations at all is that they are an expensive form of infrastructure. You have to have a way to prevent modules from being stolen, you need to charge them, you probably need some kind of an attendant. A charging post is much much more effective and is little different than a vending machine attached to a lamppost. For every station, you can install something like 100 posts.

The charging time argument in general is bullshit - charge overnight or while you're parked at work. The only argument right now is that charging posts are relatively few and far between especially in suburbs or rural areas. This will and is changing.

As for bill shock of replacing a batter at the end of its life, all you're doing is spreading out the payments over a longer period of time. Plus anyone who can afford a $60k car can afford a battery replacement later on. You're also forgetting that in 10 years, when the Tesla battery does wear down, the battery tech will either be a) unavailable because Tesla went bankrupt or b) be far cheaper because Tesla scaled up and can produce them for 25% of what they cost now.

I liked the approach of better place, but it was a stop-gap solution bridging current gas with current electric cars. It wouldn't have survived ultra-fast-charging technology anyways.

Re:Will Tesla buy them?

[Vanderhoth]

Thanks for posting that, It was exactly how I envisioned a battery swap would work.

It's a shame Better Place folded, I'm sure with some improvements they could have streamlined the process to make it much faster. Over 5 minutes to change one battery doesn't seem like a long time, but the required space for the lane means they wouldn't be able to do as many cars at one time as gas stations currently can. I imagine there could be four gas pumps for each one battery swap lane. There would be huge lines of cars at battery swap stations if there were as many EVs as there are gas cars today.

However, this does solve one of my primary complaints with EVs, if battery swap stations were as common as gas stations. At the moment my wife and I make two trips a month to visit the in-laws, a good two hour drive, which would be next to impossible to do with a Nisan Leaf or Chevy Volt. They just don't get the mileage and take too long to charge in between.

Re:Will Tesla buy them?

[Anonymous Coward]

You might as well use a normal diesel car and end up using less energy in all but the shortest trips (that you should have made with a bicycle anyway).

Re:Will Tesla buy them?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you can afford a Tesla S model you probably already have 3 other cars or travel business/1st class.

By the time a Tesla become affordable to be a daily driver for most car owners the range issue will be a moot point.

Re:Will Tesla buy them?

[haruchai]

I recall Agassi saying that'd done a battery swap in as little at 58 seconds and were aiming for an average of 3 min.
To me, that swap seemed very cautious and perhaps overly safety-conscious. And the process has room for improvement.

For example, why waste time taking the depleted battery back to the charging bay and THEN bringing the new one to the car?
The car is there for only one reason and both car and station have computers that must communicate with each other before the battery can be released so bring the charged battery to the car right away and take away the used one only after the swap is complete.
This would require another platform and a bit more space underneath and in front of the car to move the platforms back and forth to swap.

Re:Will Tesla buy them?

[Grishnakh]

A couple of problems here: 1) diesel cars are really expensive. On a typical VW, for instance, getting the optional diesel engine adds $5k to the cost of the car. 2) diesel cars have low horsepower (we're comparing to the Tesla here), lower even than their gas-engine versions of the same car. 3) Diesel can be hard to find in some places (you can't use a normal big-truck refueling facility either, because the flow rate is too high and the nozzle is too big to fit) (of course, if you're comparing to the Tesla with its very limited number of SuperCharger stations, diesel comes out ahead).

Bicycles aren't practical or safe in many/most places around the US, even for short trips. No bike lanes, dangerous/idiot drivers who will hit you, inclement weather, etc.

Re:Will Tesla buy them?

[Grishnakh]

The Tesla Model S costs a little over $50k IIRC, in the lowest-end configuration (which only differs from the highest-end configuration in the size of its battery pack; the low-end one has the least range). That's only a little more than typical family cars ($30-35k), and about the cost of many low-mid-end Mercedes and BMWs.

Re:Will Tesla buy them?

[c0p0n]

Despite what Elon says, I don't have 1/2 hour to waste every 400kms to sit at a high-powered charge station and drink coffee,

I would disagree with this particular bit - 400km works at 3-4hrs of continuous motorway driving. You should really take a rest every 2 hours or so, especially on very long journeys.

Re:Will Tesla buy them?

[Vanderhoth]

Exactly. If you could swap a battery in less time than it takes to fill a gas tank then you have a good trade off. It takes me 5 mins to fill my tank. As I said earlier each battery swap lane removes four gas pumps. If you could swap a battery in 30 seconds to a minute then you have a decent trade off to keep traffic flowing. Other wise you'd end up with one of those situations where there's a rumor gas prices are going to jump and everyone's lined up around the corner idling their cars waiting to get a chance at the pump.

Re:Will Tesla buy them?

[domatic]

Almost every supermarket in the US has filled tanks for exchange and the price is indeed fixed at about $25 bucks a pop. But I stopped going there when I found out the local Flying J truck stop would refill my tank for a third to at most half that. The fixed price exchanges are gouging you even if you bring in a fully expended tank.

Re:Will Tesla buy them?

[Quila]

I suggest that a plug-in hybrid like the Chevy Volt might be a much better fit for that type of use.

Or a diesel.

Re:Will Tesla buy them?

[Spoke]

Or a diesel.

While diesels are good for constant speed long-distance travel, they still blow for city use where fuel economy plummets and tailpipe emissions are high.

A hybrid with an atkinson cycle engine will match a diesel in long-distance travel efficiency while providing far superior city fuel economy and emissions. Not to mention that hybrids can easily be converted to a plug-in hybrid either drastically reducing or eliminating gasoline usage for most of your local driving while still being very fuel efficient for long trips.

Re:Will Tesla buy them?

[Anonymous Coward]

what about series hybrids like the Volt then?

Re:Will Tesla buy them?

[superdave80]

The lowest cost model S is well over $60k (and that's after tax credits). And $30-35k is not a typical family car. A Prius is around $20k. So I could buy a Prius, a backup Prius in case my first one breaks down, and still have enough money leftover to pay for gas for the next 15 years or so.

Re:Will Tesla buy them?

[servant]

When we drove from TN to MT and back, 1800 miles each way, we stopped for about 15 minutes every 350 miles to put in gas. Not enough time to recharge batteries during each stop. We had 3 drivers and swapped at each time. This is not unreasonable method of travel for many. Even with my wife and I drive, we swap driving with the same regularity and the stops are timed to take about the same time. I don't think our driving habits are to unreasonable or unusual. To this point, e-driving just isn't up to it. This startup (from what I think I understand) was going to SWAP battery packs, so 'refueling' would be 5 mins or less, batteries were basically leased from them so they would have a continuing cash flow, and they would deal with battery maintenance. Too bad they didn't make it.

Re:Will Tesla buy them?

[superdave80]

Ideas are dime a dozen.

No according to the patent attorneys in this country...

Re:Will Tesla buy them?

[Grishnakh]

Series hybrids are a really good compromise IMO; it's too bad there aren't more of them. But maybe it's a case of something looking good in theory but not working out so well in practice. If you think about it, one big problem with them is that they need two powertrains: a gasoline engine, plus an electric motor system and batteries. That's gotta cost a fortune. It costs a lot of money to build an engine, and it doesn't cost that much more money to build a 5L V8 engine than a 1.4L 4-cylinder engine. The small engine doesn't cost a proprortional fraction of the big engine. And electric powertrains cost a lot of money too, especially for the batteries (though here, the cost really is close to proportional; twice as much range will cost almost twice as much money in batteries, but the motor cost is fixed). The 3-phase motors and motor controllers used for electric cars aren't cheap (though they're probably cheaper than gas engines). So now, make a car with both a gas engine, electric motor/controller, and batteries, and you have an enormously expensive drivetrain. It's probably no wonder GM couldn't get the cost of the Volt down more.

Personally, I'd like to see someone make a series hybrid car with a small diesel engine, and a more powerful motor than the Volt. I've seen some individuals or small groups build something like that, but no larger companies. I don't know how the economics would work out though, but again, in theory, it sounds good. Diesel generators are always much more economical to run than gas-powered generators, so using a diesel engine for electricity generation in an electric car should work out well. And it's been done in larger vehicles: it's exactly how locomotives and large construction vehicles work.

Re:Will Tesla buy them?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't swap Tesla car batteries. Basically 100% incompatible beyond the fact they hook up to the existing power grid which offers zero advantage over simply building out new charging stations from scratch. 30 seconds of thinking on this would have made this obvious.

Re:Will Tesla buy them?

[Quila]

A hybrid with an atkinson cycle engine will match a diesel in long-distance travel efficiency while providing far superior city fuel economy and emissions

The latest Prius gets 4.6 and 4.9 l/100km hwy/city, while a Jetta diesel gets 3.6/5.2 hwy/city. Notice you're a whole liter behind the Jetta on the highway, while the Jetta is only .3 behind in the city. If you do a lot of highway driving, which is the subject here, the Jetta diesel gets better mileage than the Jetta hybrid.

Re:Will Tesla buy them?

[Spoke]

The latest Prius gets 4.6 and 4.9 l/100km hwy/city, while a Jetta diesel gets 3.6/5.2 hwy/city

Where are you pulling those numbers from? At least here in the USA, in real life, on the highway at speeds of 60-80 mph, the Prius and Jetta diesel are very similar in fuel economy, despite diesel having a ~20% advantage in energy density per gallon.

Re:Will Tesla buy them?

[Quila]

Where are you pulling those numbers from?

VW Germany. They have the cool 1.6l diesel option for the Jetta.

Re:Will Tesla buy them?

[c0p0n]

You only got out of the car to stretch your legs and rest 15 minutes every 5 or 6 hours of driving? While I admit I have also done that in the past, it's a very dangerous thing indeed to do, even if you just jumped in on the driver seat. Makes you prone to mistakes, longer reaction times and to misjudge situations. There are regulations in Europe on just how much professional drivers (eg lorry and to a less extent taxi drivers) can drive every day, for very good safety reasons. Even if you think you're doing alright please do make longer and more frequent stops, you might find yourself involved in a situation where reacting half a second earlier can save your life and many others around you.

Re:Will Tesla buy them?

[Anonymous Coward]

The USA isnt the world, and the 800km trip may have been a giveaway that the GP lives in a civilised country where diesel isnt the bogeyman...

Re:Will Tesla buy them?

[Anonymous Coward]

why not just drain the used electrolyte out the battery, and put fresh electrolyte in?
Any solution that involves a jack, or scissor-lift, is stillborn.

not surprising

[Trepidity]

Without a significant existing electric car userbase, the only real way to make money on this would be to get a manufacturer to buy in. But the only manufacturer that seems willing to spend much money on any kind of quick-charge network is Tesla, and they chose an alternate solution.

Re:not surprising

[haruchai]

Elon tweeted this a couple weeks ago:

Elon Musk @elonmusk 9 May

There is a way for the Tesla Model S to be recharged throughout the country faster than you could fill a gas tank.

Can't say for certain that he's talking about battery swap and when it would be available but it seems the Model S is inherently capable.

Re:not surprising

[ArcadeMan]

Maybe he was talking about the Apple-style model: buy a new car with pre-charged batteries! /duck

Re:not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

Highways that charge the car as it drives!

Re:not surprising

[newcastlejon]

I was going to say how making announcements like that through Twitter is silly because you don't have enough characters to just what this better way is, then I realised that from a marketing standpoint it's not a bug, it's a feature.

Re:not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

yes that that is/was their problem since it's an uphill battle to get a new EV car system designed around someone else's battery design. I thought it would have been smart to also sell the kits to EV enthusiasts at cost to help build up the market for the batteries. Things like that not only spread the EV love sort of speak but also spread the word, increase volume of required parts and get your brand out to all corners.

Trying to get the few car manufacturers there are and whom are doing or going to do EVs to use your pack a tough sell. And just look at the packaging and sizes of the existing EV and plug-in hybrids on the market today. They are all very different so getting a single package to map to different vehicle and/or electrical design is also very tough. I would also think there is lots of 'we do things better than anyone else' in many of these companies too.

Sorry to see them go and when I saw they were not supporting the enthusiast sector I had my doubts because of the tough buy in requirement.

Re:not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

a truck with a diesel generator that extends an arm ala fighter refueling as I'm driving at
80 mph.

if I stay with the truck I can go for a really long way without stopping ...or I could drive a truck

Re:not surprising

[CodeBuster]

Maybe he was talking about the Apple-style model: buy a new car with pre-charged batteries! /duck

All they would have to do is slap an Apple logo on it and there would be legions of idiots rushing to defend the idea of getting a new vehicle with pre-charged batteries every time your vehicle runs low on charge.

Re:not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

That is actually a viable idea, wireless charging repeaters could be built into or next to the roads.

Re:not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, governments, many of which have very large totals of pool vehicles, could buy in to this. That would take care of the critical mass problem. Note that not EVERY government vehicle would have to change over, just the ones that are used to run around town i.e.the vast majority. Governments could also decide to build the swap stations as well. They could always sell them later once the idea takes off with fleet buyers and car share schemes and, probably last of all, individual owners.

Re:not surprising

[TheLink]

How's it viable? How are you going to make it safe?
1) to charge a 60kWh battery pack from zero within in one hour you need to supply more than 60 kilowatts. If it's 30 minutes you need 120 kilowatts.

A 60 kilowatt wireless beam looks like a weapon.

2) If you're driving down the highway at 100kph you need to supply an additional 15 kilowatts (assuming the car needs 15kW just to travel at that speed).

Prophetic Name

[Farmer Tim]

It's definitely gone to a better place now.

Re:Prophetic Name

[Anonymous Coward]

TIP: Never invest in a startup named after a Jackie deShannon song.

Nice idea, wrong problem

[crow]

So Better Place is liquidating while Tesla is turning a profit. This shows that they were focusing on the wrong problem. Instead of creating a new infrastructure specifically for electric cars (all of which would have to standardize on battery packs, limiting design and innovation in an emerging technology), Tesla simply made sure they could be efficient enough and pack enough batteries in for about 300 miles. Tesla also figured out relatively fast charging (slower than filling up with gas, but not horrible), and is putting charging stations in major highway corridors. If the cars become popular enough, we will eventually see charging stations all over the place.

I think people are a lot less nervous about finding an electrical outlet to charge from than they are about finding a battery swapping station.

Re:Nice idea, wrong problem

[haruchai]

Shai Agassi has said for years that the Better Place swap stations were designed to accomodate multiple batteries.
And what is so terrible about standardizing on a few formats?
In a pure EV, there aren't many better places to put a heavy packs other than the floor.

Also, the Better Place plan was fundamentally about charging stations as well as swap. You couldn't buy the car without a charger installed at home and at work.
If EVs become as popular as some of us hope, there'll be a huge amount of both charging and swap stations one day, especially if we get larger vehicles running on batteries.

Re:Nice idea, wrong problem

[Anonymous Coward]

They were either fixing the wrong problem, or was too far ahead of the curve. In order to do business, people would have to have cars that can be battery swapped. There really isn't a major player sell battery swappable cars. How do they expect to turn a profit if they have no customers?

Re:Nice idea, wrong problem

[Monoman]

Tesla's fast charging is OK but not great. If you have to stop for more than one fast charge on a trip then people are not going to like it. Assuming equal costs to the customer: If a battery swap can happen in roughly the same amount of time as a gasoline tank refill and have 100% driving range then swapping is better than quick charging.

Re:Nice idea, wrong problem

[mrvan]

This is even more so for Israel, where the longest drive you can make is from the Golan heights all the way down to Eilat, which is just about 300 miles. The borders in the North are closed (Syria and Lebanon) and most Israeli have no intention whatsoever to drive to Jordan or Egypt, and the time to cross the border is at least two hours anyway so that is probably time enough to charge your car. As regards private transportation, Israel is practically an island with 99% of Israeli citizens only ever leaving the country by air.

So, Israel is the perfect testing ground for a charging-based electric car park, and battery swapping makes a lot less sense there.

Coupled with the strategic value of being less dependent on oil while not having relations with the biggest oil producers, and the fact that solar makes a lot of sense in the middle east, I hope that another company with a more sensible model will succeed.

Re:Nice idea, wrong problem

[gl4ss]

So Better Place is liquidating while Tesla is turning a profit. This shows that they were focusing on the wrong problem. Instead of creating a new infrastructure specifically for electric cars (all of which would have to standardize on battery packs, limiting design and innovation in an emerging technology), Tesla simply made sure they could be efficient enough and pack enough batteries in for about 300 miles. Tesla also figured out relatively fast charging (slower than filling up with gas, but not horrible), and is putting charging stations in major highway corridors. If the cars become popular enough, we will eventually see charging stations all over the place.

I think people are a lot less nervous about finding an electrical outlet to charge from than they are about finding a battery swapping station.

they were chargeable in other ways than swapping the battery packs.
but it's pretty expensive to keep a battery pack network.. you need 2-3x the battery packs. considering how expensive part of the car they are, it really is expensive.

on the other hand, they tried to sell these to normal commuters.. tesla being a luxury market item.

they were probably losing money on every car they sold/leased and at higher pricing it would have gone to just stupid pricing - considering that israel has expensive gas(no idea if that's actually true, say compared to finland) and it still was expensive to switch to electric..

Re:Nice idea, wrong problem

[jklovanc]

Battery swapping technology has a number of issues;

Form; Most electric cars shoe horn batteries into the smallest space possible requiring them to have different shapes for different cars. Standardizing restricts the form of the vehicle as well as the form of the battery.Right now almost every vehicle has a different battery.

Cooling; To charge and run properly batteries must be cooled which further restricts the form of the battery and vehicle.

Structure; Currently batteries are within the structure of the vehicle for strength and protection purposes. If the battery had to be removable so would the surrounding structure. This adds weight and complexity to vehicles.

Certainty; When pulling up to a charging station is is certain that there is electricity to use. At a battery swap station it is quite possible to pull up and all the batteries of the desired type may be discharged. The swapped battery is an unknown quantity. How does one know that the battery has not been abused by someone else and won't fail in a few miles?

Self service; At a charging station it is simple to plug a car in and charge it. An swap station would require much more skilled operation. What happens if the battery jams due to mud or snow? Who controls the charging of the batteries? Sure much of this can be automated but automation costs a lot of money.

Duplication; High performance batteries are expensive. There would have to be multiple batteries in multiple places to support one vehicle. There would be tens of thousands of dollars in batteries sitting waiting to be used. Someone would have to pay for that.

EV batteries are much more complex than the batteries one puts in a flashlight.

Re:Nice idea, wrong problem

[Anonymous Coward]

It really sucks. It's fine for stopping at the mall, but other than that, it's really just shitty. I've got an electric truck; a bunch of deep cycle batteries, but it's really not useful, as 30 minutes is a long fraction of 100 miles, and even for 300 miles it's pretty stupid, compared to 5 minutes in and out, counting a red light on the freeway. (yes, mine cost an order of magnitude less than Elon Musk's "cars are for rich people who can afford gasoline anyway" toy)

Re:Nice idea, wrong problem

[WindBourne]

Actually, the real issue is that nobody will want to give up their good batteries for junk.

Re:Nice idea, wrong problem

[Anonymous Coward]

And what is so terrible about standardizing on a few formats?

The formats suck, that's why. The biggest barrier to the electric car (and a lot of other stuff) is focused almost entirely on the batteries. This isn't just a matter of arguing about what shape to make the adapter, if it were then standardizing would make sense.

Re:Nice idea, wrong problem

[jklovanc]

As I stated;

The swapped battery is an unknown quantity. How does one know that the battery has not been abused by someone else and won't fail in a few miles?

Re:Nice idea, wrong problem

[Solandri]

So Better Place is liquidating while Tesla is turning a profit. This shows that they were focusing on the wrong problem. Instead of creating a new infrastructure specifically for electric cars (all of which would have to standardize on battery packs, limiting design and innovation in an emerging technology), Tesla simply made sure they could be efficient enough and pack enough batteries in for about 300 miles.

I wouldn't jump to that conclusion so quickly. There's an unknown fraction of the population which is ok with a car with a 300 mile range. Tesla has done ok so far because they haven't shipped enough units to saturate that fraction of the market.

If that fraction turns out to be 80%, then Tesla will do fine, and the big three will become the big four.

If that fraction turns out to be 8%, then Tesla's sales will hit a ceiling relatively quickly, and their EV will not be The EV which changes commuting. Something like what Better Place was trying may be the better long-term solution.

Rather than count how many cars Tesla sells, perhaps we should be looking at what fraction of their buyers own a Tesla as their only car. If that number is high, then the 80% case is more likely. If that number is low, then the 8% case is more likely.

Tesla also figured out relatively fast charging (slower than filling up with gas, but not horrible)

An ICE car can refuel in about 2-3 minutes, Call it 5 min once you add in time to move the car in position, pop open the fuel cap, swipe your credit card, etc. It can go about 350 miles between refueling stops. At 65 mph, you can cover 350 miles in 5.4 hours. So you're spending 5 / (5+(5.38*60)) = 1.5% of your time refueling. Or put another way, your ratio of driving time to refueling time is 64.8 on a long trip.

Tesla's supercharge stations give you about a half charge in 30 minutes. If you're going 65 mph, you can cover 150 miles in 2.3 hours. So if you're making a long trip you're going to spend .5 / (2.3+.5) = 17.9% of your time charging. Your ratio of driving time to recharge time is 4.6. Yeah you can mitigate that somewhat by coordinating meals and bathroom breaks with supercharge stops, but there are only so many meals in a day. I wouldn't call it "not horrible" quite yet. It's better than needing hours to recharge, but being better than nonviable does not automatically make it not horrible.

Re:Nice idea, wrong problem

[mrvan]

Gas in Israel is normal price form a european perspective, actually a bit cheaper than expensive countries like finland or the Neherlands.

http://www.brandstofprijzen.info/brandstofprijzen-europa.php
(it probably went up a bit because the shekel appreciated, but IIRC it is a bit above NIS 7, which is indeed around 1.50 euro. )

Re:Nice idea, wrong problem

[Anonymous Coward]

You overlooked connector problems. Replacing the battery means disconnecting it and then connecting another one. The current is nowhere near flashlight values and dirt on the connectors can cause havoc.

Simply speaking dirt increases resistance and P = R * I*I. Increase R and P (heat generation in the dirt) increases, possibly to a level causing problems with melting metal or fire.

Re:Nice idea, wrong problem

[Jeremi]

[An ICE car] can go about 350 miles between refueling stops.

All true, but it should be pointed out that driving 350 miles (in any car) sucks. It means you are sitting in a chair, unable to do anything but watch the road in front of you, for 5+ tedious hours.

Most people who need to go that far would prefer to take an airplane; and certainly anyone who can afford a Tesla can afford plane tickets.

So I see the 300 mile range limit as largely a non-issue (outside of perception/marketing, anyway).

Re:Nice idea, wrong problem

[Anonymous Coward]

If a model S can do 300 miles at 60mph, then you only need to stop every 5 hours. Most people need to stop more often than that on a road trip. Even if its only 200 miles at 70mph, then you drive almost 3 hours before stopping. Plus they can put a Starbucks or McDonalds at the charging station to give people something to do (and spend money on) with that half hour required to recharge.

Re:Nice idea, wrong problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if its only 200 miles at 70mph, then you drive almost 3 hours before stopping. Plus they can put a Starbucks or McDonalds at the charging station to give people something to do

I think Americans are fat enough, without eating McDonalds every 3 hours.

Re:Nice idea, wrong problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Tesla is NOT turning a profit. They're getting handouts. The positive cash-flow they posted is due to selling government-created "electric car credits" to car companies that ARE actually selling vehicles that people are willing to buy.

Re:Nice idea, wrong problem

[haruchai]

I've heard Agassi address some of these.
Form: If it's a BEV or one with a range extender that only charges the battery but doesn't power the car, there's no transmission to worry about.
Also, you don't need to have an battery-swap version of every possible model; just a couple per automaker would be enough.
Cooling: I don't know how the Fluence ZE handled this but they did - and they were selling cars in Israel, a fairly hot country.

Duplication: Actually more like hundreds of thousands in batteries per swap station but a big part of the Better Place plan was a communications network and the ability to both charge from and feed back into the grid, Swap stations could potentially be used as for peak-shaving, load-following or voltage regulation.
Since many stations and batteries would be built in advance of significant sales, this would be a initial source of income ( or mitigation of losses ).

Self-service: The swap stations wash the underside of the car before removing the battery; you drive in as you would a car wash. Battery charging isn't that hard and this could be managed remotely, You could also have a pre-set where the batteries charge at some predetermined safe rate if the remote connection is lost and, in any case, the circuit breaker has been around a long time.
Since it was also part of the plan to have a snack bar or restaurant at swap stations, there would be staff onsite if necessary.

Certainty: The Better Place Fluence has / had Internet connectivity, a list of nearby swap stations and the ability to reserve a battery .

Re:Nice idea, wrong problem

[haruchai]

Under the Better Place plan, you don't own the battery so if you can one that's not up to your expectations, swap it again.
I would assume the swap station can test a battery to see if it's suitable for use. Uninterruptible power supplies do this as a matter of course.

Re:Nice idea, wrong problem

[Monoman]

" A Supercharger can charge about half the battery in 30 minutes. All Model S vehicles with the 85 kWh battery can use Superchargers as can properly equipped 60 kWh battery vehicles."

http://www.teslamotors.com/charging#/onthego

Re:Nice idea, wrong problem

[Zaelath]

Duplication; High performance batteries are expensive. There would have to be multiple batteries in multiple places to support one vehicle. There would be tens of thousands of dollars in batteries sitting waiting to be used. Someone would have to pay for that.

Mostly I agree, but I think you're almost exactly wrong on this point.

You need "charging time" x "vehicles per charging time" batteries, per station. There's still some duplication, and that point is still valid, but that's entirely the point of battery replacement stations; you pay some amount of money over and above the cost of charging the battery so that you can swap out the battery instead of waiting for the charge.

I think would almost entirely be reflected in not even buying the original battery; as you said, if you did why would you want to replace it with some old junk at the first charge.

Re:Nice idea, wrong problem

[GoChickenFat]

Tesla's not turning a profit due to focusing on an electric car. According to this WSJ story http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324659404578499460139237952.html it's due to selling pollution credits to other car makers. Add to that the tax credits offered by State and Federal income tax, a large loan from the US federal government and federal grants - well we're not talking about a business model that stands on just selling a better electric car idea.

Re:Nice idea, wrong problem

[jklovanc]

Form: If it's a BEV or one with a range extender that only charges the battery but doesn't power the car, there's no transmission to worry about.

What I was getting at was that batteries are shaped to fit the car and not the other way around. Some cars have T shaped batteries. Other cars have rectangular batteries. I don't see where I mentioned transmissions.

Cooling: I don't know how the Fluence ZE handled this but they did - and they were selling cars in Israel, a fairly hot country.

Cooling is provided by a combination of of the car and the battery. Sure a car and battery can be designed together with proper cooling. Difficulties in designing the chassis can be compensated for be changes in the battery designThe issue comes in when the car has to conform to the cooling requirements of the battery. There is much less flexibility.

Duplication: Actually more like hundreds of thousands in batteries per swap station but a big part of the Better Place plan was a communications network and the ability to both charge from and feed back into the grid, Swap stations could potentially be used as for peak-shaving, load-following or voltage regulation.

So to get this off the ground would cost billions of dollars in batteries. Who will pay for that?

Since many stations and batteries would be built in advance of significant sales, this would be a initial source of income ( or mitigation of losses ).

A source of income for the battery manufacturers but not the car makers or swap station owners. Again, Who pays for all those batteries?

Certainty: The Better Place Fluence has / had Internet connectivity, a list of nearby swap stations and the ability to reserve a battery

There is still the possibility that there are no batteries available within the remaining range of one's battery and then we are back to waiting for a charge.

Take a look at it from the point of view of the owner of an electric car service station.
With quick charging
Initial costs
1. Buy/lease land
2. Build a small restaurant.
3. Buy and install 10 charging stations
Operating costs
1. Restaurant expenses
2. Power costs
3. Servicing 10 charging stations.

With battery swap
1. Buy/lease land
2. Build a small restaurant.
3. Buy and install 10 charging stations
4. Buy a number of batteries of each type
5. Buy and install automated swapping systems. Different batteries may require different swapping systems.
Operating costs
1. Restaurant expenses
2. Power costs
3. Servicing 10 charging stations.
4. Maritain swapping systems
5. Replace worn out batteries.
6. Dispose of worn out batteries

Which one do you think an investor would choose?

Re:Nice idea, wrong problem

[jklovanc]

so if you can one that's not up to your expectations, swap it again.

It is difficult to swap a battery in the middle of nowhere if it fails unexpectedly. The point is that the range on different batteries will effect driving. As batteries wear out they will have to be swapped more often and it will be to the station owners' advantage to use them as long as possible. The convenience of swapping batteries has not been shown to override the limitations.

Re:Nice idea, wrong problem

[haruchai]

They did find a few investors who were willing to take the risk and these were people with lots of experience and deep pockets.
You don't have to spend billions to start but as I pointed out in another post, Better Place should have gone after the commercial fleets and taxis in big cities along with providing grid storage to utilities - that alone is worth serious money.

"Worn-out batteries"?? I guess you're unaware that when a battery pack is no longer suitable for use in an EV, it still has 70% of its capacity.
Those can be repurposed as uniterruptible power supplies & still very useful for grid storage. If you've every had to wrangle even a medium-sized UPS containing lead-acid batteries, you'd be very grateful for ones with Li-on.

It would be 10-20 years before you'd have signficant numbers of lithium batteries that could no longer be repurposed and they are fully recyclable.
Different swapping systems? How so? Agassi has said from the start that the Better Place system can handle different batteries.
I'm sure you could easily design a system that wouldn't work with their stations but it would be just as easy to make one that did.

Re:Nice idea, wrong problem

[Anonymous Coward]

A funny comment on a tech site. Shirley the technology exiists right now to know before I leave home in the morning exactly what batteries are available in what swap stations anywhere within a 300 km radius, with live updates as they are swapped in, charged, and swapped out? We're talking about the future, let's at least talk about the technology of the present. The sunk costs of a petrol station are pretty high: a swap station doesn't need huge tanks in the ground. As for car design, it seems to me that all car designs look pretty much the same these days. You might need different batteries for small, medium and large+SUV types, but really that's it.

Re:Nice idea, wrong problem

[tftp]

it should be pointed out that driving 350 miles (in any car) sucks. It means you are sitting in a chair, unable to do anything but watch the road in front of you, for 5+ tedious hours.

I drive 450 miles per day sometimes. If mere 350 miles suck for you, you are doing something wrong. To me, the drive is pleasing, relaxing, and entertaining. If you need more than just watching the road, you are always free to listen to the radio, a CD, or an audio book. If you have a cell phone you can hold a teleconference (over hands-free interface, of course!) If you have a ham radio you can talk on repeaters (no hands-free is required by law for that.)

Most people who need to go that far would prefer to take an airplane; and certainly anyone who can afford a Tesla can afford plane tickets.

The USA is a large country. You can fly to my destinations only in a GA airplane that can land onto a minimal strip. Some of my destinations have no airports of any kind nearby.

So I see the 300 mile range limit as largely a non-issue (outside of perception/marketing, anyway).

That is probably true. If you need to make such trips with any regularity, an EV is a wrong car to buy. A road trip not only requires enough charge to travel between charging stations; it only requires quick recharge at those stations. Currently only gas or diesel cars qualify for that.

If you set road trips aside, you will end up with a city car that can survive on 100-150 miles per charge. My own in-city trips are about 60-70 miles max, with 30 miles being typical. But watch for the hills - though a decent regen brakes will recoup a good portion of expended energy on the way down. But that works only if you live in the valley and climb the hills closer to the end of your trip.

Re:Nice idea, wrong problem

[wienerschnizzel]

While mostly valid points, there are a couple of strange ones:

Cooling; To charge and run properly batteries must be cooled which further restricts the form of the battery and vehicle.

Why should this be a problem for a battery switching system? Isn't it much easier to cool the batteries when they're outside of the car? Seems like this is a case of an advantage for the swapping system.

Duplication; High performance batteries are expensive. There would have to be multiple batteries in multiple places to support one vehicle. There would be tens of thousands of dollars in batteries sitting waiting to be used. Someone would have to pay for that.

This is also an advantage of the swapping system. Batteries are the most rapidly degrading part of the car. Assuming they are good for 500 charges and the range is 100 miles, they will need to bee replaced after 50 000 miles. So you'll need more batteries than cars upfront, but in the long run, you will keep discarding the degraded batteries without an additional hassle to the owners and it will even out.

Re:Nice idea, wrong problem

[jklovanc]

Vehicle owners don't care about follow on uses for used batteries. They care about the cost and performance of their car and the cost of re-charging, Swap-able batteries will be more expensive to build and more expensive to recharge (considering all the more expensive stations and standby batteries) and have poorer performance due to design compromises. Better place never overcame these issues and it may not be possible..

Re:Nice idea, wrong problem

[jklovanc]

Why should this be a problem for a battery switching system? Isn't it much easier to cool the batteries when they're outside of the car? Seems like this is a case of an advantage for the swapping system.

The system must also be able to be charged direct while the battery is in the vehicle. The Better Place model was that the car would be charged overnight at home most of the time and battery swapping would mainly occur on long trips. Much like the fast charging stations used by Tesla Motors.
Lithium batteries need to be cooled during discharge as well as charging.

So you'll need more batteries than cars upfront, but in the long run, you will keep discarding the degraded batteries without an additional hassle to the owners and it will even out.

Who pays for the additional up front costs? Would you rather borrow $20,000 today and pay me back in 10 years or $10,000 now and another $10,000 in five years? In the second instance you save five years of interest on $10,000. Higher up front costs cause higher long term costs.

The cost for 50k of range for swap-able batteries and the additional cost for designing and building the car with the swap-able battery far outweigh the day or two inconvenience to replace the battery. Swap-able batteries are really only useful for high mileage vehicles that recharge frequently throughout the day and Better Place failed to target them.

The beauty of the standardized recharging plug is that it is a small component. Plugs of many different shapes could be accommodated in any car and the industry picked one standard.. The battery on the other hand is integral to the design and performance of the vehicle. A standardized battery restricts those considerations too much to be viable.

Re:Nice idea, wrong problem

[Zebedeu]

In fairness, they can't produce enough of the things to match demand.
That has to say something to their product.

The question is: if they were able to match demand, would they make a profit?
If so, then the fact that they're already cash-positive (if artificially), means they have a viable long-term future.

Re:Nice idea, wrong problem

[sturle]

Tesla have sold almost all the cars they are going to make in 2013. This means they must be selling vehicles that people are more than willing to buy. Thousands of them have already been pre-sold in my country (not U.S., so no car credits), and the first delivery isn't due until September. Which other car producers have sold their entire production to consumers for months to come?

Re:Nice idea, wrong problem

[sturle]

Add to that the tax credits offered by State and Federal income tax, a large loan from the US federal government and federal grants.

All U.S. car makers got larger loans and grants than Tesla did, and Tesla already paid their loan back. None of the fossil car makers have paid back their loans.

Re:Nice idea, wrong problem

[sturle]

Tesla's not turning a profit due to focusing on an electric car. According to this WSJ story http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324659404578499460139237952.html it's due to selling pollution credits to other car makers.

How stupid are journalists alowed to be without getting fired? Look at this: Tesla acknowledged in a recent SEC filing that emissions credit sales hit $85 million in 2013's first quarter alone—15% of its revenue, and the only reason it made a profit.

No, it isn't the only reason it made a profit. Tesla made a profit from selling cars. This is a by-product of selling electric cars in the USA (only). The editor of this paper must believe his readers have negative intelligence. Yes, if you take away a major source of income from any company without replacing it with another income, then some numbers will turn red. No wonder he became a journalist if he thinks that is news. His supply of "news" is endless.

Tesla can take much higher prices if they want to, and still sell everything they make. The price tag is higher in Europe, where they don't get those pollution credits. If you order a Tesla Model S now, at least in Europe, it won't get delivered until next year. The car is immensely popular despite it's price tag.

Re:Nice idea, wrong problem

[GoChickenFat]

What's fair about federal tax dollars being used to both prop up the company and provide cash to people to buy the product? Do they have a demand problem without the tax incentives? Why didn't the $500 million federal loan go into production to meet the demand. I call BS on the demand claim. If the demand is that high then they wouldn't need federal loans and tax incentives.

Re:Nice idea, wrong problem

[GoChickenFat]

Ford did not take stimulus money.

Re:Nice idea, wrong problem

[GoChickenFat]

So, are you advocating the end of the pollution credit system and the tax payer funded purchase program? Apparently, based on your logic, neither are needed in order for Tesla to exist and be profitable.

Re:Nice idea, wrong problem

[haruchai]

Poorer battery performance? How do you know that?

Re:Nice idea, wrong problem

[Zebedeu]

I call BS on the demand claim.

Tesla Motors is a publicly traded company. You're welcome to go over their numbers if you'd like.
Unless you want to claim they're lying in their financial reports, in which case you can report them to the proper authorities.

Re:Nice idea, wrong problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Which other car producers have production capacities as small as Tesla's?

Re:Nice idea, wrong problem

[sturle]

I'm not advocating anything. Is the goal of this system is to keep Tesla in business and profitable? No other goals? Really?

I can't understand current U.S. politics at all. I find this entire filibuster politics retarded. Do you have a budget yet?

Re:Nice idea, wrong problem

[dak664]

So swap the passenger compartment onto a new chassis. No special equipment required, drive the chassis into the cab similar to the way tractors pick up front end buckets. If you buy only the cab and rent the chassis then Initial purchase cost would be small. You could switch between long distance, short distance, truck, limo, mini chassis as needed.

Re:Nice idea, wrong problem

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole lure of electric cars is that i can plug in at home over night and be good for the next day. (lets not get into anecdotal evidence about how far YOU drive the next day). Just me and my electric bill. No more watching the price fluctuate over night cause a hurricane shut down refineries or other such BS. Fuck AGW and all the other shit, 300 miles in a Tesla is a LOT cheaper than 300 miles on Gasoline.

Better Place was trying to re-create the current filling station mode; with a complex system of battery swapping. That would require all cars to match the battery packs and probably have a qualified technician handle the swap. Say there was an automated machine to swap the batteries, that breaks down, then what. A gas station has multiple pumps in case one is bad. So now I need 2 of these battery swapping machines/technicians everywhere. What is the add on price for all this infrastructure over the cost of the pure electricity that I am buying.

Better Place should have been selling the concept to taxi cabs and municipal fleet operations. Places that drive long distances but never go that far from home. I could see taxis hopping all over this. You come up with a stripped down custom made taxi, with all the taxi gear in the dash, and room for 4 with battery swap. I bet taxis would have looked hard at replacing their gas fleets in a short amount of time. The gas to electric savings alone as an operating expense would have driven the sales. This the same reason airlines are buying up the new planes that get better "gas mileage". The cost of fuel is a killer to them.

Re:Nice idea, wrong problem

[GoChickenFat]

It's interesting that neither you or anyone else want's to take up the debate about using tax dollars to prop up a commercial enterprise. Does Tesla exist because of or in spite of tax dollars. Keep in mind Elon has more than one enterprise befitting from tax dollars. Did Better Place fail because it's home country didn't prop it up well enough? Is any of this a good use of tax dollars - especially when most tax payers do not benefit and the business owners are enormously enriched?

Re:Nice idea, wrong problem

[Zebedeu]

Perhaps nobody wants to take up that debate because you obviously have a political axe to grind.
I have my own opinion on the use of tax dollars here, but I don't want to get into it because I know it'll turn into a never ending discussion on politics.

I have better stuff to do with my time, and I do not live or pay taxes in the US, so I don't think my opinion is too relevant here anyway.

But good luck finding someone who will debate you though.

Re:Nice idea, wrong problem

[sturle]

Many! Most are of course not well known. Lamborghini which is well known for obvious reasons, only made 2197 cars in 2012.

Re:Nice idea, wrong problem

[h4rr4r]

How about exercise?
I can't even sit in my office chair for 4 hours without getting up and moving. 450 miles in a car is like torture.

Re:Nice idea, wrong problem

[FaxeTheCat]

Actually, I can hardly remember the last time I drove longer than 300 miles in a day. And when i did, I would definitely want a break after 4-5 hours anyway. Actually, with 300 miles, I can drive to our weekend cottage and back without a charge, and drive to work for a couple of days... Maybe I should have a look at one of them Teslas...

Re:Nice idea, wrong problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever see an electric car trying to pull a trailer? No. Why? Range. Ever see one with plywood or a ladder on the roof? No. Why? Same reason.

Airplanes are fine... except for the getting groped by TSA, the expense, the tedious waiting, and the not being able to bring anything along with you.

Clearly, you live in a city. Some of us live out in the sticks, where NOTHING is closer than ten miles away. 20 mile round trip to get milk. In the snow. I want to see an electric car do that.

North America is BIG. City dwellers and Europeans generally just don't get it about the kind of mileage people put on their vehicles over here. Five year old cars with 100,000 miles on them is not at all unusual.

Then there is the whole issue of electric cars actually being fueled by coal... I know you guys hate talking about that.

Re:Nice idea, wrong problem

[tftp]

Exercise ... I don't know what you are talking about :-)

Re:Nice idea, wrong problem

[jklovanc]

Most cars are built using unibody construction so removing the cabin is not an option. Body on Frame vehicles are heavier which impacts performace and the connections will add complexity to the vehicle which increases costs. Someone has to pay the costs of having several chassis. This will be recouped by much higher operating costs.

Re:Nice idea, wrong problem

[jklovanc]

I was talking about the vehicle performance (range acceleration, carrying capacity, etc) not necessarily the battery performance. For example, by integrating the battery into the chassis the battery container can do double duty as part of the structure of the vehicle. If that battery container has to be removable the surrounding structure would need to be stronger and heavier. Heavier cars have less performance.

Re:Nice idea, wrong problem

[haruchai]

That's true and the Fluence ZE is a bit more than 20% heavier than the ICE version but most of that extra weight is the battery pack which will lighten over time although I don't expect it to drop significantly in the next decade.

But if you're not talking about race cars, where EVs do very well, except for drag racing, routes with very long steep climbs and endurance runs, then the performance difference isn't such a big issue.

For one thing, the low-end torque is quite impressive, shaming even some beefy diesels. And if you do a lot of city driving, you won't care very much that you can't get to 150 mph when you can leave most cars behind when the light changes, when you're not wasting energy / fuel when not moving and the fact that you can recapture some energy when braking rather than just making heat.

And that extra weight has some advantages, being so close to the ground it improves traction ( along with the torque ), stability and handling. It's one of the contributing factors to the driving experience of Tesla's Model S.

Re:Nice idea, wrong problem

[TheLink]

Tesla method - when you leave in the morning the charged battery is in your car. A few hours later you stop at a diner and charge your car.

Better Place method would be like booking flights. It's just too complicated for the little additional benefit it gives - you need lots of stuff to work together well. In practice half the time you are probably end up sitting in a diner waiting. And you're going to pay more.

To me a better thing to try than swapping batteries would be hydrocarbon fuel cells.
Use nuclear/solar/biofuel tech to make synthetic hydrocarbons. Synthetic hydrocarbons to fuel cells to electrical watts.
You can also burn the synthetic hydrocarbons as jet fuel- it's going to be hard for battery tech and electric motors to give you fuel efficient 900kph planes, or even supersonic (for military use).

Re:Nice idea, wrong problem

[Anonymous Coward]

I drive 450 miles per day sometimes. If mere 350 miles suck for you, you are doing something wrong.

I like doing X for hours so if you don't like doing X for even half the time you are doing something wrong.

Re:Nice idea, wrong problem

[jklovanc]

More weight means more energy to move the vehicle. An EV with a swap-able battery will require additional structure and will be heavier than an EV with an integral battery. The heavier EV will will have a shorter range.

Re:Nice idea, wrong problem

[dkf]

If mere 350 miles suck for you, you are doing something wrong.

Driving in a part of the world with a high traffic density is "doing something wrong"? There's a world of difference between driving on a nice open road with only a rare other vehicle (very pleasant, actually) and slogging through heavy traffic (sucks a lot because you have to pay close attention the whole damn time) but for some people, the place where they're starting from and the place where they're going are just plain separated by big cities with choked roads.

350 miles in heavy traffic? Flying is better, as is taking a train, but might not be more economic (depends on how many people are going in the group).

Re:Nice idea, wrong problem

[haruchai]

In testing, there's not much range difference between a Nissan Leaf and a Renault Fluence ZE although the Leaf is much quicker from 0-60 mph.
At 70 mph, both deplete a fully-charged battery in about an hour. My typical long ride to visit the family is ~350 miles door to door.

Using a Leaf's high current DC charging vs the Fluence's battery swap would add at least 2 hours to the trip, one way.

Re:Nice idea, wrong problem

[haruchai]

After doing a bit more research, I'd say your concerns about swappable batteries and extra weight are unfounded or overblown.

Here's some curb weight data - http://pastebin.com/GXJKTYYJ ( the Slashdot filter wouldn't accept this )

Looking at that list, it's unreasonable to conclude that making a swap-capable car imposes some unreasonable weight restriction since Renault has already done so for an apparent weight penalty of about 3%.
Unless you plan to argue that they could have installed a similar sized battery & motor into the Fluence chassis with no penalty over the petrol version - in which case the Leaf and the Zoe's curb weights are perplexing.

The Tesla Model S poses an interesting question, especially given Musk's recent cryptic tweet. Internet sources say that he's been hinting at battery swap since 2009 but in order for it to be practical for Model S / Model X, it would have to be already in the design since the Model S battery is basically the entire floor.
The other possibility is that he really means adding an Aluminum-air fuel cell but that's not rechargeable and the aluminum oxide would have to be disposed of or recycled by electrolysis - requiring LOTS of electricity.

Re:Nice idea, wrong problem

[haruchai]

The Better Place plan included a rebate for customers who had to swap their batteries more than X times.
An unexpected failure can happen to any car in any location - the AAA has an entire business model built around this and the Better Place plan includes 24x7 roadside assistance.

And in the internet age, it's very easy for disgruntled customers to make their feelings known far and wide.

Any savings from keeping heavily used or bad batteries in the system would quickly evaporate in the face of rebates for excessive swapping, payments for roadside assistance and towing and loss of customer goodwill ( which usually means loss of customers )

So then ...

[LordKaT]

You mean the lack of customers is a hindrance to business? You mean to tell me that businesses don't exist to make the world a better place by trying to force a product into a niche that isn't exactly there yet?

Huh. I could have sworn this was going to work. I mean, there's absolutely no profit in fossil fuels, right?

It's not about being "old fashioned" either. It's about what works. Electric doesn't work for the vast majority of the world - yet. The business there right now is either niche ultra-high-end, or utility - both of which require a large up-front investment that you're only going to find in certain places. There's a growing niche for big-city transport, but that requires investments that many municipalities aren't willing to make just yet.

There are also a lot of problems that electric doesn't solve, like the big-haul transportation industry. Sure, you could offload that work to a national rail network, but then you run into the problem of overloaded rail traffic. In America, that's a bigger problem than you would actually imagine. (eg: it's becomming

Electric cars might be coming for the masses, but these guys were way ahead of the curve. A successful business launches right before the peak of the curve - and we're nowhere near there yet for electric cars.

So then, I'm not surprised. Sad that it didn't work out for them, but, really, did you expect anything else?

Re:So then ...

[Anonymous Coward]

A successful business launches right before the peak of the curve - and we're nowhere near there yet for electric cars.

If you can do that, I suggest you write a book on how to do it and become the most successful author ever.

Re:So then ...

[NEDHead]

Not yet - curve still peaking! Hold on...pretty soon now, just wait a little longer....

Re:So then ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not yet - curve still peaking! Hold on...pretty soon now, just wait a little longer....

You're a contributing spokesperson/pudit on CNBC, aren't you?

No, you were a little too specific.

Re:So then ...

[Zeromous]

> ultra-high-end

I'm not sure what you're driving but I'd consider $100k very much upper middle class vehicle.

Re:So then ...

[Anonymous Coward]

everyone knows that there are no successful businesses before the "right before" part of the peak of the curve. so lots and lots of businesses must fail before we get close to the peak of the curve and where a business can be successful.

If this guy wrote a book on this it would have to launch before the peak of the curve for books about launching businesses before the peak of the curve. Otherwise he'd not be successful at with it.

Re:So then ...

[Anonymous Coward]

According to Wikipedia's deciles of US household incomes, you need to look at the top 1.5% to see an income of >=$250,000 for a household. Purchasing a car that costs $100,000 on an income less than that -- keeping in mind we're talking a household here, and certainly households with that sort of income will almost certainly have two cars -- is (while certainly doable) a rather terrible use of money.

Re: So then ...

[Zeromous]

I fail to see how upper middle class is not top 1.5perc incomes.

The rich are like 0.05perc of population. well to do People in my middle class neighbourhood drive BMW and audis and porsches in same category as tesla. I make nowhere near that kind of money. (Si gle income) and drive a 40k car (a toyota). Not a stretch if my wife got a job we could afford a tesla and a buspass.

Ultra high end cars are in a class all their own.

Re:So then ...

[FaxeTheCat]

A successful business launches right before the peak of the curve

Not only that, but starting a battery swap business when there is one car model with swappable batteries (some Renault which nobody has heard of anyway according to my sources) is not only ahead of the curve. It is before the curve has even started.

Swap outs are the way to go

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless charge times significantly decrease and/or battery capacities significantly increase then battery swapping is the way to go. Tesla is in a good position to create a standard.

Re:Swap outs are the way to go

[0123456]

Except they make no sense for all the reasons another poster listed above, and the very obvious reason that no-one wants to drive off the dealership forecourt in a brand new electric car and then swap that $30,000 battery for an old clunker a hundred miles down the road.

Re:Swap outs are the way to go

[Anonymous Coward]

Mass transit is the way to go. But nobody likes sitting next to a stinky stranger on the bus anymore than they like stuffing a stinky used battery in their shiny electric car.

Re:Swap outs are the way to go

[Monoman]

That's silly. If batteries become a commodity like fuel then that whole $30k mindset will be BS

About time

[WindBourne]

It was a horrible implementation of a mediocre idea. And the company was designed to waste as much money as possible.

Whoah whoah whoah

[Anonymous Coward]

"liquidating"? I thought the word for that since 1800 was "shuttered"?

Are we there yet?

[westlake]

It's been said elsewhere that every electric car manufacturer has its own solution for the core technologies of batteries and charging.

There is only one car that you can re-charge at Better Place.

The wholly automated Better Place station costs around $500,000. That's not easy to recover when in all of Israel there were only about 700 of these cars on the roads.
     

Misquoted

[Anonymous Coward]

What he actually said was "The investor money has gone to a better place.... our pockets. You're all fired and we're bankrupt. See ya, bitches."

Re:Tits ass and cocaine party!

[alexander_686]

I am missing something here – where in that paragraph does it talk about tax breaks?

Beat 22KwH in 3 minutes, 24 hour range 1172 miles.

[An dochasac]

We'll see when Telsa (or anyone else) can beat Better Place's distance record of 1172 miles in 24 hours. When Telsa figures out another way to push 22KW into a car in 3 minutes without causing a huge explosion and fire, than we'll have a better idea. Until then, Better Place's technology was the most practical form of electric transport using existing technology. It was a good idea but like many good ideas, it needs to wait until society is ready for it and entrepreneurs know how to sell it. This is by no means the first time we've seen technological regression. The rechargeable battery electric car was invented by French physicist Gaston Planté in 1856. In 1878, a Methodist minister named John Wesley Carhart proved that a steam-powered car he named the “Spark” could travel long distances under its own power. But when it frightened a valuable horse belonging to industrialist J.I. Case (tractor company owner) to death, it was banished from the city and the world would have to wait until 1886 when Karl Benz and then later Henry Ford would bring back an idea whose time had finally come.
Similar examples of technological regressions and reinventions can be found in the history of electric lighting. Better Place had a better idea for electric car charging, and if we can learn anything from history– most good ideas eventually see the light of day.

Not quite.

[Shivetya]

Tesla was focused on maximizing their non car selling income. If not for the tax credits, carbon credits, and so on, Tesla would not be in the position they are now. In other words, they riding on our backs and using politicians for their gain,.

Where did the $850,000,000 go?

[n2hightech]

Thats a lot of dollars to burn. What did they spend it on? Thats way more then Tesla spent to get their car into production.

Re:Where did the $850,000,000 go?

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently they funded a car with Renault and some test service stations.
Not sure how much Renault ponied up, but French engineering time has never been cheap.

Re:Where did the $850,000,000 go?

[fermion]

Pets.com blew though $400 million in two years in todays dollars. And presumable they had no significant R&D costs, and no physical product, other than the sock puppet. It was all spent on snacks and advertising.

Re:Where did the $850,000,000 go?

[Anonymous Coward]

Snacks and advertising, and... Aeron chairs.

Not here

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe this world wasn't meant to be a better place.

Proprietary Charging Outlets

[Anonymous Coward]

"Better Place" was using proprietary charging outlets with smartcard-style protection, and pushed for a law prohibiting competitors from using their outlet infrastructure.
From the start it sounded like a nightmare case of vendor-lock-in. As an Israeli consumer - I say good riddance.

Open infrastructure, ability to charge the car from electrical outlet in your driveway, and laws permitting car conversion to electricity is the fertile ground needed to make EVs thrive.

To demonstrate the point let's compare e-bicycle/e-scooter market vs. e-mopeds. E-bike or e-scooter costs from 1K to 2.5k USD in Israel, and market is thriving.
Gasoline powered bikes and mopeds are extremely popular, especially in large cities. As a contrast due to laws, regulations and insane insurance costs - you have to search long and hard to find an e-moped on the street.

Re:Proprietary Charging Outlets

[Anonymous Coward]

What is the difference between an e-moped and an e-scooter?

Re:Proprietary Charging Outlets

[Anonymous Coward]

The same as ICE moped Vs scooter:

moped: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moped
A motor assisted pedal vehicle.

scooter: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scooter_(motorcycle)
A motorbike with a step-through frame and a platfrom for the rider's feet.

"Agassi"...

[storkus]

"...a former top executive at software maker SAP..."

I really think this says it all: it would be like having an IBM exec trying to run Google when it was a startup--you don't put curmugeons in charge of something this new (IMHO).

Re:"Agassi"...

[Anonymous Coward]

Agassi had a really good return of serve in his prime, though.

Re:"Agassi"...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, Agassi sold a start-up company to SAP (TopTier) for $400m, and then became a top executive, so your analysis is fundamentally flawed.

The problem was the CEO.

[Animats]

The problem was the CEO, Shai Agassi. I heard him speak at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco once. He came across as a con man. He's good looking, a good speaker, and talks total bullshit. He was talking about expanding his company by a factor of 10 every year. Nobody does that in a business which requires substantial real-world infrastructure or a large number of employees. This was after five years in which the most his company had actually accomplished was a 3-taxi demo in Tokyo that only ran for three months.

Battery swapping was never a good idea to begin with. It was a bet against improved battery technology - a bet which required a huge infrastructure to make work at all. A full-scale battery swap system would require as many battery swap stations as gas stations. Each would be big, more like a car wash than a pump island.

The battery swap stations Better Place built in Israel are single-lane stations that require about five minutes for a battery swap. So they correspond to a one-pump gas station, but cost much more.

What I think Better Place / Shai Agassi got wrong

[haruchai]

While I think they were right to agressively build the infrastructure of charge points and switch stations and did a lot of great work with the swap stations, communications network and publicity, I think they focused far too much on the end-user market, even in Israel.

I'm going to make some assumptions which may be wrong but, in Agassi's place, I would have gone after the utilities more - build the switch stations fairly early on and use them to support energy generation, wind & solar farms, peak-shaving, whatever, for a price.
It's hard to say if it would have been profitable but it would have been bringing in some cash on a regular basis and might have alleviated nervousness in the investors.
The next failing was having only one (battery switch) vehicle and that being a passenger car - a light truck and / or delivery van ( like Brightsource's effort ) should also have been added which brings us to failure #3 - not chasing company fleets and taxis.

There are lots of crowded big cities with crappy air and people and goods on the move. Delivery vans may run all day but most don't go very far from where they park, much like most taxis.
If the effort had been focused on a handful of large cities with the intent of replacing 5% of their ICE taxis and delivery vans, it would have been money better spent and the company might still be afloat.

Tesla swap vs. Better Place swap

[spage]

Since Elon has said that the Model S ( and presumably the Model X) is capable of conversion to battery swap

It's not automated, but yes, jack the car up at a dealer, detach the battery pack, attach a charged one. Tesla Motors has been vague on the details. Since owners own the car and its expensive warrantied battery pack, most likely a dealer will give you a loaner battery as a courtesy for a long trip, and you'll later return to pick up your original. Obsessive fans at Tesla Motors Club debate more elaborate swapping networks but as yet there's no evidence that Tesla will go for it. Musk has shown he'll do whatever it takes for his EVs to compete, but it seems Tesla is busy building out the Supercharger Network (relatively fast DC quick charge stations spread along major routes, unless you're a dumbass New York Times reporter).

perhaps Tesla will try to get the Better Place switch station tech - despite the company's failure, they did have solid working tech as Tesla could benefit tremendously by not having to reinvent, er, the wheel.

BP's intellectual property includes their outdated battery pack design (Tesla's flat sheet is better), the QuickDrop technology for attaching the battery (Tesla's is better), and automating the battery swap with robots. The last seems only worth a few million, unless evil patents are involved.

Re:Tesla swap vs. Better Place swap

[haruchai]

From what I've read, Better Place put a lot of effort into their software and communications network, which was supposed to include vehicle-to-grid for both the cars and the swap stations.

I suppose that while Elon is making midrange to highend cars, his customers may prefer to own the batteries but as he moves towards more everyman autos, battery leasing may be an increasingly attractive option barring radical breakthroughs in battery tech, charging and cost.

Re:Tesla swap vs. Better Place swap

[spage]

Bringing up financing just introduces more flaws in BP's model.

Leasing an EV is a good idea, if you have a regular 40 mile commute get a Volt or Leaf right now and you may save money. But Better Place didn't lease you "your" battery, because it regularly gets swapped for something else. They sold you electric miles (Shai Agassi made it sound like he was freeing you from that expensive battery pack, you'd just pay to drive around cheaply on electricity). But that means buying a car becomes a messy three-way between you, the car manufacturer, and the "provider of a charged battery". And since most people can (and want to) recharge at home for most of their driving, BP had to stop you from plugging into a wall outlet for cheap kWh in order to make their finances work. Others here allege they used a unique connector, my understanding is they would meter your home EV charging station separately, and you could only recharge at Better Place's public stations. It was a complete mess. The genuine benefit of a quick swap during a long trip costs big money to deliver, and BP's model could only do it by making all your regular recharge and driving much more expensive, eliminating the "cheap running costs" benefit of EVs. A few hundred people in Israel found the tradeoff worthwhile, but it was always going to be a tough sell.

Re:Tesla swap vs. Better Place swap

[Sun]

The radio here has been brimming with people saying how happy they were with the cars, and how they don't know what will happen next. All of them (that I heard) said they can charge the car at home, and it's only long commutes that are a problem.

Shachar

Re:Tesla swap vs. Better Place swap

[haruchai]

I've heard that Renault may step in but to what extent is unclear. I still think battery swap is a great idea and that the BP execution was well thought out and executed on the technical implementation but their pursuit of primarily private customers was a terrible mistake, even in countries with very high gas prices.

Taxis and fleets should have been the initial targets. Renault has all the pieces in place, especially with the Kangoo.
If they can make that into a QuickDrop model, then perhaps battery-switching can be revived.

There are other battery switch techniques - I've seen a couple different ones exhibited in Chinese but cannot find a translation.
One is a manual process that can be done by a couple guys with a jack; the other uses a robot arm to remove and insert - that looks scary.
If anything goes wrong with the arm, it's easy to imagine it punching right through the side of the car.

Look at the grand picture

[Diddlbiker]

Technology, as much as we think when it's disruptive and ground breaking is rarely ever revolutionary. It's not like everyone started to use Windows instead of DOS, or that in one fell swoop the mobile market switched from dumb phones to smart phones overnight.

In that sense, Better Place seemed indeed to have focused on the wrong problem. Yes, electric charging stations are far and in between. Right now. But unlike gas pumps, practically every residential unit and business location can have one. So, for now, your Tesla has an effective drive radius of, what, 150 miles? That's good enough for most daily commutes. Maybe not if you're a salesman, but I think Tesla has envisioned this. They're not catering for the entire car market; after all, the car is not really a good deal for Joe Average who has to live on $50,000 and bring two kids to college on that either.
There is the uncertainty of electric cars becoming a success, but given the development of fuel prices and M&R that is much higher with gasoline engines (all those moving parts) it surely is attractive. So let's assume Tesla sells well. What will happen? The $100,000 price point will ensure that certain business will scramble to get charge stations. Four and five star hotels and restaurants for instance. Where will Mr. Executive stay overnight? Why, where he can charge his Tesla, of course!
Movie theaters, malls... any place where it's likely you're going to stay for a prolonged time will offer charging. Once the market of charging station installing businesses has risen, why not coffee and fast food? One thing that everyone seems to forget in the discussion—you don't need to charge the battery all the way up in most cases. You need to make it home—or at worst to the next charging station. That can bring down the charging time needed considerable. If as a business it will lure in five or ten customers every afternoon the decision to get a charging station might be an easy one.
Better Place is opposite: the process seems cumbersome, and as shown in the video more akin to going through a carwash than getting a tank full of gas. Here's why I don't go through the car wash on a daily basis: it takes too much time and I can't do another thing. On the other hand, getting a short charge-up for the batteries while getting breakfast, or stopping for a drink on the way home—perfectly acceptable to me.
For the gentleman who drives 800 miles per day: if you make ten stops, you only have to "charge 80 miles" on each stop on average. And if you only make three stops, I'm sure that those are not five minute ones. Once charging stations are everywhere, doing 800 miles visiting customers shouldn't be a problem anymore.

What about the Apocalypse?

[Anonymous Coward]

In the 'New World', I can syphon gas from derelict cars I come across...how do I survive the apocalypse with an electric car? It ain't going to be easy...

I need my gas guzzling SuV to run down those zombies, anything else, and I'm shit outta luck... :)

standards are the issue, not space

[spage]

EV batteries are big, but adding swap capability only adds minor additional space.. The Model S pack is swappable. The problem is standardization. Better Place burned through all that money for only one battery design that only one car adopted, and even then the Renault Fluence had to have its trunk extended to make the Z.E. version fit BP's QuickDrop pack. BP hoped that customers would demand swap capability so other car companies would adopt it, but it didn't happen, and car manufactures have instead adopted many different chemistries, layouts, placement within the car, air vs. water cooling...

EV batteries are built up from multiple slabs or sheets. Already if your battery breaks, you only replace the defective module. You could imagine swapping the individual modules for charged ones, but each still weighs around 40 pounds and has be reattached to high-voltage high-current wiring and the cooling system. It's an order of magnitude harder than prying out 8 D cells from your boombox, and again there's no "D cell" standard for EVs.

Maybe there could be a standard for a battery extender, a cage in the trunk where you can add several of these modules to your city EV for a long trip. That avoids the problem of swapping your $12,000 pristine battery for a clapped-out beater. But all the cost-time-weight-safety-standardization tradeoffs work against it. Skip the hassle and rent a long-range car for those trips, or use the other car that's already in the garage of most American households.

Re:standards are the issue, not space

[CodeBuster]

That avoids the problem of swapping your $12,000 pristine battery for a clapped-out beater. But all the cost-time-weight-safety-standardization tradeoffs work against it. Skip the hassle and rent a long-range car for those trips, or use the other car that's already in the garage of most American households.

This is an economic argument against it, but the fact remains that swappable battery fails in the market because not enough people really want it and why should they? It doesn't offer enough advantage over an integrated battery or simply using a regular fossil fuel vehicle to be worth the hassle. This is especially true if a household can only afford one vehicle for their cheap and reliable transportation. In such cases a quality used fossil fuel vehicle, which has already been depreciated, is the best choice from a kitchen table dollars and cents perspective.

wrong

[spage]

Capable? Yes, it could probably be done. Will it be done? No. Elon is a smart man and he knows how to say the right things to the right audience to get what he wants.

More importantly, he's selling his second-generation made-in-USA car to thousands of buyers, and winning awards.

However, as a practical matter the Model S already has difficulty competing with fossil fuel powered vehicles on range and even then only by making the batteries fully integrated components molded into every bit of spare room in the vehicle frame.

The Model S chassis is a thing of beauty. A compact high-power motor and reduction gearing, and a flat battery pack fills the frame because there's nothing else down there. No muffler, catalytic converter, oil pan, etc. Why not use the lot for batteries instead of taking away trunk space?

In fact it's more like an alternative to the S class Mercedes for limousine liberals...

Don't oversell your straw man. The $95,000 S Class is more expensive and quite a bit more luxurious.

... who want to appear green using our green (aka money). Tell me again why my tax dollars should be subsidizing Musk and Tesla?

Tesla just repaid its $465M loan under the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing (ATVM) Loan Program set up under the G.W. Bush administration; Ford and Nissan received billions under the same program. If you're referring to the $7500 tax credit, it lets buyers keep more of their money for the worthwhile goal of "ending America's addiction to foreign oil", as every Republican president since Nixon has intoned. Tell me again why my tax dollars should be subsidizing your home mortgage, or any other tax rebate?

Your sneering tone about "appearing green" ignores the genuine increase in efficiency from an electric drive. No doubt you'll bleat about coal powered cars, ignoring the increasing role of cleaner natural gas in USA's electricity generating mix, and that many buyers will install solar PV to reduce their carbon footprint further. Meanwhile a Mercedes E-Class (is everyone driving that a "limousine whatever" too?) is a lot slower and at around 25 mpg will consume 15 tons of gasoline over 120,000 miles. Plug in cars are definitely better for the environment.

Re:wrong

[CodeBuster]

Don't oversell your straw man. The $95,000 S Class is more expensive and quite a bit more luxurious.

You and I both know that people in the market for a model S are looking for a top end luxury car and all that comes with that. They're going to want the leather seats, power everything, navigation with concierge service, sophisticated "glass cockpit" LCD touch screens, automatic parking and polished walnut burl inlay. The loaded price for the Model S is $96,000 (after tax credit) which puts it squarely in competition with the Mercedes S class for top end luxury. Even the base price model at $71,000 is well into luxury car territory. These are cars for the 1%, period.

Tesla just repaid its $465M loan under the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing (ATVM) Loan Program set up under the G.W. Bush administration

What was the total amount of interest received? I question whether it was enough to justify the risks that we took. Tesla succeeded but they very well could have failed too (they still might). Indeed, several other taxpayer investments in alternative energy did fail, notably Solyndra. If we didn't receive enough interest to justify the risks that we took when we loaned money to Tesla then we still lost because we could have earned the same amount elsewhere for less risk or more for the same amount of risk.

Your sneering tone about "appearing green" ignores the genuine increase in efficiency from an electric drive.

The people driving these cars aren't concerned about efficiency. They have enough money that they don't care how much fuel for the Mercedes would have cost or how much less efficient the drive is. Indeed, they're typically far more concerned with horsepower and to a lesser extent 0-60 times. What they want is a large and luxurious sedan with a powerful motor that accelerates them quickly onto the highway. Efficiency is the least of their concerns.

ignoring the increasing role of cleaner natural gas in USA's electricity generating mix, and that many buyers will install solar PV to reduce their carbon footprint further.

Natural gas will come back under price pressure again as more commercial vehicle fleets, with known routes and fueling locations, switch to realize cost savings over diesel. As for reducing carbon footprint, this is something that mostly wealthier Americans in the top 10% income brackets worry about or at least are willing to pay for. The rest are just getting by and don't have the luxury of worrying about carbon footprints or being green, except perhaps in an abstract sense. They're worried about their jobs and retirement and to a lesser extent their health care, so green is way down on their list of spending priorities and they won't be installing solar panels on the roof because even with tax credits they cannot afford it.

Meanwhile a Mercedes E-Class (is everyone driving that a "limousine whatever" too?) is a lot slower and at around 25 mpg will consume 15 tons of gasoline over 120,000 miles.

That argument might resonate with Mercedes buyers who tend to be wealthier and therefore would care more about the environment because they're in a position to afford luxury goods. However, the Mercedes E class is also offered in a hybrid configuration for those buyers who are concerned about their carbon footprint or being seen as "green" in a chic sort of way.

Re:wrong

[bored]

Your sneering tone about "appearing green" ignores the genuine increase in efficiency from an electric drive. No doubt you'll bleat about coal powered cars, ignoring the increasing role of cleaner natural gas in USA's electricity generating mix, and that many buyers will install solar PV to reduce their carbon footprint further.

You say that like natural gas is good....

Even so, unless people buying those cars have meters in their garage that tell them when the wind farm is blowing, its likely its base load being supplied by the trusty coal or nuke plant. Currently, In most places natural gas is being used as peak load, or to supplement renewable.

So hypothetically, an electric car buyer _could_ install solar panels but installing sufficient solar capacity to charge their cars is going to cost as much as the vehicle and is supplied at inconvenient times for charging an automobile. Furthermore, if electric cars became the normal within the next 5 years, where do you think all that electricity is going to come from? Right now its probably going to be natural gas, which is cleaner than coal but has a big fat CO2 footprint (and then there is the claim that leaking methane from production is significant) too, especially when transmission/charging/etc losses are computed. So, its quite possible that simply converting to a natural gas vehicle gives you more of an advantage. Look here http://www.eia.gov/oiaf/1605/coefficients.html#tbl2 to see that natural gas is only about 33% better than than petrol for Btu per unit CO2.

Really, if you want a green battery car, the electric mix should be significantly tilted towards nukes. But many of the same people advocating electric cars are out their advocating wind power. Which is a good idea, but no where near scalable in the short term to cover current generation needs much less the energy needs if everyone switched their cars to electric overnight. When I hear "green" people taking about renewables I just think, they are advocating more natural gas and a significant increase in energy costs. And that is why renewable has had a slow uptake. Its not a simple as building windmills and solar plants everywhere and reaping the rewards. If it were then we would have built them 30 years ago. No, for every MW of wind energy someone is buying a MW of small natural gas generators that can be spun up fast to compensate for the fact that the wind cannot be controlled.

So, the green heads are as much at fault for the climate change problems as anyone. Because, when faced with a choice of solutions they tell people to pick either massive energy price increases or a quality of living decline. Its not really any surprise that people just kick the problem down the road, and they will continue too until the green heads wake up and realize that we have the technology to provide truly clean energy at prices that would make buying an electric car pay for itself when compared with petrol. Instead they run around and fear monger about things based on anecdotal evidence and lack of knowledge instead of actually looking at the statistics and science.

So, yes calling the tesla a coal burner, may be stretching a little, but it is not far off. Enjoy the car for what it is, but don't pretend its somehow more green than buying a toyota yaris, ford focus or any of the many other efficient gas automobiles.

Re:wrong

[spage]

Meanwhile a Mercedes E-Class (is everyone driving that a "limousine whatever" too?) is a lot slower and at around 25 mpg will consume 15 tons of gasoline over 120,000 miles.

That argument might resonate with Mercedes buyers who tend to be wealthier and therefore would care more about the environment because they're in a position to afford luxury goods. However, the Mercedes E class is also offered in a hybrid configuration for those buyers who are concerned about their carbon footprint...

Before arguing fatuous points, go visit fueleconomy.gov. 2013 Mercedes-Benz E400 Hybrid gets 26 mpg. Still 15 tons of gasoline.

... or being seen as "green" in a chic sort of way.

More snide comments about other drivers. What happened to you?

Re:wrong

[spage]

So, the green heads are as much at fault for the climate change problems as anyone.

Comic facepalm.

Re:wrong

[Quila]

Indeed, several other taxpayer investments in alternative energy did fail, notably Solyndra. If we didn't receive enough interest to justify the risks that we took when we loaned money to Tesla then we still lost

Ventures fail, even government-backed ones. The problem with Solyndra was that the beancounters told the Obama administration it was a bad risk, and the administration pushed it through anyway to hilight their "green" agenda and to pay off a major campaign bundler.

Re:wrong

[CodeBuster]

Before arguing fatuous points, go visit fueleconomy.gov. 2013 Mercedes-Benz E400 Hybrid gets 26 mpg. Still 15 tons of gasoline.

Most people are only willing to compromise so much for the environment. If they were really concerned about the environment, and willing to make personal sacrifices, they would take the bus and not own a car. So even if it does only get 26 mpg, buyers are likely to view that as an acceptable compromise in exchange for the roomy luxury sedan. Hybrid allows them the appearance of being green and to these buyers appearance often maters more than reality, especially when it comes to the environment. As for myself I couldn't care less. I'd rather have the horsepower and luxury if I was going to shell out for the Mercedes E or S class. After all, when you're spending that much for a car, you're well past caring about how much it costs to gas up. If you have to worry about that then you can't afford it.

Re:wrong

[CodeBuster]

The problem with Solyndra was that the beancounters told the Obama administration it was a bad risk, and the administration pushed it through anyway to hilight their "green" agenda and to pay off a major campaign bundler.

And they expect us to believe that ObamaCare is going to save money? Do they take us for complete fools? I'm always amazed that progressives are able to claim with a straight face that ObamaCare will save money. These are the same people who have no retirement savings, don't understand basic economics and can't even balance their own f***king checkbook. They're either expert liars or too stupid to realize what bullshit is being spoon fed to them by the Obama administration. Either way, I neither want nor need their "help".

Hybrid...

[rthille]

I'd love a full-electric car, with about 50-80 mile range, which could tow a trailer or hook up a hitch mounted rack with a generator in/on it for longer trips. Drive it to work/shopping on a daily basis, rent the gen-trailer when going on a ling trip.

Re:Hybrid...

[tftp]

I'd love a full-electric car, with about 50-80 mile range, which could tow a trailer or hook up a hitch mounted rack with a generator in/on it for longer trips.

That would be GM Volt. The generator is inside, no need to tow it. The MSRP is $32K, which is also lower than most EVs. Volt is a true EV; the inbuilt ICE only runs a generator. Buy one today.

Re:Hybrid...

[Zebedeu]

Volt is a true EV; the inbuilt ICE only runs a generator.

That's not entirely true.
According to Wikipedia:

The Volt operates as a pure battery electric vehicle until its plug-in battery capacity drops to a predetermined threshold from full charge. From there its internal combustion engine powers an electric generator to extend the vehicle's range if needed. Once the engine is running in this extended range mode, it may at times be linked mechanically (via a clutch) to assist the traction motor in propelling the car in order to improve energy efficiency.

Re:Hybrid...

[rthille]

The point is, the cost and inefficiency of hauling the generator around all the time, even when I know I won't need it >90% of the time makes it seems like a poor compromise. But maybe they did the math and came up with a sweet spot. Or maybe the possibility of a more efficient system is distorted by human imperfections in the market.

Re:Hybrid...

[tftp]

I'm driving a hybrid, and I'd say it's the best *single* car you can buy. If you want to have two or more cars, then you may be better off with one gas car, or one truck, and one EV; then you can use each of them where they shine. But if you only have one car then only a hybrid will work. It is impossible to even contemplate (for me, at least) that I cannot go to a certain place just because the car is being charged, or because there is not enough range. My car will take me anywhere and at any time, and I am comfortable knowing that. A plug-in hybrid like Volt will work as an EV during short trips, so you get the best of both worlds. A pure EV today is just asking for trouble.

Why not full service?

[200_success]

So many service attendants standing around! You would think that one of them could wash your windows while you wait for the battery swap.

I live here in Israel and considered buying

[Anonymous Coward]

Sad to see it close down. Great idea. I wished it would have worked. I just don't think it could work in Israel at that price point. It was 120,000 shekels which is the same as a mazda 3 which is the most popular car here (100% tax on cars usually but better place got tax breaks). The problem is that this is not an insignificant sum to most people here and they weren't going to bet so much money on something so new. If they had priced it at 80,000 in the beginning a ton of people would have signed up. Once they had 10,000 on the road meaning a loss to the company of 400 million shekels then they could have started selling it at full price. given they lost 3.2 billion shekels it's small potatoes.

Volt is a reasonable compromise

[foxalopex]

Although it's slightly expensive, the Chevy Volt is a good compromise for those wanting to drive an electric and needing the range. I should know I own one. In the summers when mostly doing in city driving, the Volt's roughly 40 mile range battery gets me around gas free and charges entirely at night when I sleep. I also recently completed a 1300 mile cross-country road trip across Canada fuelling up with gas every roughly 200 miles or so. So basically you have a fully electric car if you don't drive too far and a hybrid car that gets a moderate 40 mpg (I managed to get this on my trip) when you need it.

Re:Volt is a reasonable compromise

[FaxeTheCat]

I am somewhat surprised at the short range cited in this discussion. I routinely drive my VW diesel 900 Km (560 miles) on a full tank. Is the gas tank really very small?

Was a dumb idea with no future

[GameboyRMH]

Swappable car batteries have no future outside of motorsports. There are many problems which are pointed out by the EV-haters every time the topic comes up, and very soon cars will have enough range not just for the average commute, but exceeding the range of a full tank of gas.

Re:Beat 22KwH in 3 minutes, 24 hour range 1172 mil

[FaxeTheCat]

The problem is that they started in the wrong end.
A battery swap station needs cars with swappable batteries. A car with swappable batteries does not need a swap station.
The only way to make the business profitable is to ensure the customers actually exist by working with the car manufacturers to create cars with swappable batteries.
That did not happen, and the result was no surprise.
Another problem is that for now, people who buy electric cars have them for short trips. They do not need battery swaps.
So the company lost 2-0. And they should have seen the realities rather than dream.

Re:Beat 22KwH in 3 minutes, 24 hour range 1172 mil

[Anonymous Coward]

A bone stock eight year old Volkswagen Jetta TDI can do at least 1,100 miles in 24 hours with around 30 gallons of fuel. In the snow. Canadian kids do this all the time. Three guys, a cooler full of pop and a road trip to Florida for spring break.

Then there's this: http://jalopnik.com/5908578/stock-volkswagen-diesel-goes-16261-miles-on-single-tank-of-fuel

You want to know what's impressive though? My Ford F-250 crew cab pulling four people, all their crap for a long weekend plus a 7,000 pound, 33 foot toy hauler (big frickin' double axle caravan, for you Euro types) and getting between 12.5 and 14 mpg. At highway speeds, not some hyper-miling 45kph up hill, 50kph down hill BS. If I babied it I could probably get 16 mpg. Driving empty I've done 24mpg on the highway, at 95-100 kph. Add water/methanol injection and get 5-10% improvement. Add a tuner chip and maybe another 5% improvement.

Plus, you know, it can pull a trailer. Or twenty sheets of drywall. Or two cords of wood. Or a boat. Or a trailer AND a boat. You take my meaning.

Electric cars are a scam to relieve governments and credulous idiots of their money , and will remain so until the energy density of batteries approaches that of hydrocarbon fuels. No signs of that on the near horizon, for sure.