Better Place
MIT Technology Review, January 26, 2012
Edited by Andy Ross
Last week in Israel, a hundred electrically powered
Renault Fluence ZE cars hit the roads, fueled by 225 kg lithium-ion
batteries with a range of 160 km. The batteries can be recharged at home or
swapped out at stations.
Better Place has built a network of robotic
battery-switching stations throughout Israel for owners to swap their
batteries in minutes for fully charged ones. The cars include navigation
apps that guide a driver to them.
The Fluence ZE (for zero emissions)
is a pleasure to drive. Smooth and silent, the car glides easily past the
speed limit on Israel's fastest highways. Its navigation system can provide
directions to the nearest battery-switching station at any time.
Company founder Shai Agassi predicts that by next year, his electric cars
will be the best-selling vehicles in Israel and Denmark. Better Place has
won endorsements for its business model. The company was founded in 2008 and
is now worth about $2.25 billion.
MIT Technology Review, July 6, 2011
Edited by Andy Ross
Next month,
Better Place will begin selling electric cars
in Israel. The company claims to have solved the biggest challenge to the
widespread adoption of electric cars: the batteries are heavy and recharging
them takes hours.
Better Place will sell an electric car made by
Renault with a range of 100 miles on a charge. For longer trips, the company
provides swap stations where a robot system swaps out a depleted battery for
a full one in five minutes. The swap stations can charge a battery in one
hour.
Better Place will have 40 swap stations in Israel by the end
of 2011 and a total of 55 soon after. It has also set up about 1,000
charging stations. The company says that will be enough for Israel.
Better Place offers a package including a car and three years of driving
25,000 km per year for $46,000. This is a third cheaper than buying and
fueling a gas car in Israel over three years. Other packages include monthly
subscription fees.
Better Place says it has 20,000 private customers
on its waiting list and 70,000 tentative orders from fleet customers. This
is nearly half the car market for Israel.
Better Place recently opened its first swap station in Denmark, it is building a
network of stations in Australia, and it has pilot projects with Chinese
automakers.
Making Electric Cars Work
MIT Technology Review, March 31, 2008
Edited by Andy Ross
A startup called
Project Better
Place raised $200 million of venture funding in 2007. The plan is to
install recharging infrastructure in Israel and Denmark and to sell electric
cars using a business model much like that for cell phones.
The
company aims to address two limitations of electric vehicles: their range is
considerably less than gasoline-powered cars, and the batteries take hours
to recharge from ordinary outlets. Founder and CEO Shai Agassi says Project
Better Place is installing a vast grid of outlets at parking spaces in
Israel.
The company has
arranged for the automaker Renault to manufacture electric cars with
batteries that can easily be swapped out. The cars will have at least a
hundred miles of range. On long
trips, a driver will be able to pull into a station where a simple robotic
system will remove the depleted battery and install a fully charged one.
To make this system work, Project Better Place will sell cars for a
subsidized cost in return for drivers signing up for a service contract. The
subscription will cover the cost of renting the battery, swapping it out,
and the electricity for charging it up. The number of miles driven will be
tracked using a wireless network.
The plan is particularly suited for
small countries such as Israel and Denmark. All of the infrastructure needed
in Israel can easily be paid for with the money that Project Better Place
has already raised, Agassi says.
The Long Tailpipe
By Shai Agassi
Blog, March 30, 2008
Edited by Andy Ross
How do you run all cars in Denmark without gasoline? How do you build a
virtual oil field big enough to drive an entire country?
Some people
say about me that I dream big. Well, as much as I would like to be called a
dreamer, I will share with you today a very pragmatic, down to earth
solution to one of our biggest challenges in the global fight to stop
climate change — moving our transportation systems to zero emissions.
Project Better Place declared only 2 months ago in Israel a
groundbreaking new framework for electric transportation at country scale.
In a simple way of describing our model, we are a new mobile company.
Applying the same model as mobile phones to electric vehicles, we set a
ubiquitous infrastructure that makes electric vehicles convenient,
affordable, having long-range and appealing to consumers. We connect clean
generation sources, through the grid, with car batteries — providing
drivers with a better alternative to burning gasoline. Zero emission
vehicles all the way from generation to drive at a scale that can move an
entire country is the creation of a virtual oil field — one that will never
run dry, and will not kill us in the process.
No Better Place
MIT Technology Review, May 31, 2013
Edited by Andy Ross
Better Place has run out of financing and will liquidate its assets. It was
a bold effort to wean the world from oil by innovating with software and
business models on top of existing electric vehicle technology. Better Place
owned the battery packs in its customers' electric cars. For a monthly fee,
customers replenished them at home and let robots swap depleted packs for
fresh ones at Better Place stations. But it was tough to get carmakers to
make cars for standardized battery packs.
The big idea was hatched in
2005 when SAP golden boy (as he then was) Shai Agassi spoke at Davos and
Israeli president Shimon Peres urged him on. Agassi quickly raised $200
million and made a bold start with Better Place. He focused on Israel and
Denmark, but consumer interest was tepid and he won too few customers. Only
Renault made cars for its battery packs. The failure highlights the limits
of battery technology and the challenges of innovation in the car market.
GR
Shai
explaining something to me at SAP University in October 2004
Shai
Agassi was the founder and CEO of Better Place. He was a member of the
SAP Executive Board from
April 2002 through March 2007, where he held responsibilities
for the global development of the SAP product line and its
portfolio of industry solutions.
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