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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."
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.
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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.
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.