You may not have heard of Better Place but they want to revolutionize personal
transport through networks of
EV car stations. Their stations
will provide recharging facilities but more importantly a
battery
swap service that customers can sign up for. Better Place think
extensive infrastructure like this will make more people accept
EV
electric cars and reduce our reliance on oil.
Shai Agassi founded Better Place in October 2007. Prior to that he jointly owned two software companies with his father before selling them to SAP for $US410 million. Palo Alto, California, is home to Better Place but they're thinking of bigger things than just the U.S. They're planning a global venture. Their big ambitions have started well because they've managed to gather plenty of investment - hundreds of millions of dollars. They've also negotiated with various governments to arrange tax concessions for their eco-friendly company.
One of the biggest problems with EV cars is their relatively low range compared
to traditional vehicles and the length of time it takes to recharge them.
A network of EV electric car battery swapping stations solves this problem.
The process would work as follows. Your EV vehicle reaches a certain level
of battery power (maybe a third remaining) at which point the car's GPS
display shows you where the swapping stations within your range are. You
drive to one of the battery swap stations and up onto a ramp. An automated
battery shuttle robot locates the battery on the underside of your vehicle
and removes it. The depleted battery is returned to a charging bay and the
robot replaces it with the correct type of charged battery for your car.
There's no need to pay there and then. Instead you have an account with
Better Place which is automatically settled at the end of each month from
your credit card or bank account. It takes only 2 minutes for your
EV
car battery to be swapped which is less time than it takes to pump
and pay for gas. The speed of the process has already been proved at a demo
in Japan in May 2009.
Better Place have a vast amount of work ahead of them to realise their dream.
One problem they needed to solve for is the variety of different types of
batteries, sockets and battery bays on the different EV vehicles. Better
Place have decided it was too hard to offer the battery swap service for
all cars and have entered into an agreement with Renault-Nissan to only
provide for their cars. In return for being the chosen car maker, Renault
have agreed to supply their
EV cars at discounted prices,
in the same ball park as gasoline cars. This way, Better Place hope that
consumers will be more likely to make the switch to electric. The problem
of the price of EV vehicles is another roadblock currently preventing mainstream
acceptance.
Renault have already produced an
EV prototype. Its an electric
version of their current petrol powered Megane and has a range of around
160 kilometres or 100 miles. Renault have committed a lot of money to this
project. They plan to spend around $US600 million between 2008 and 2011
on EV development and quick swap battery designs. In September 2009 Renault
released a statement saying that the first EV electric car that will be
available on the Better Place network will be called the Fluence ZE. Lets
hope its a great car since consumers will have little or no choice in the
car they run on the network.
Better Place's founder believes 100% that batteries are the new oil. He's happy that rapid development is now taking place in this area. Shai Agassi commented, 'we had 90 years of no research'. He's right. Even as recently as the 1980's batteries were heavy, cumbersome, toxic and underpowered. Then the mobile phone industry came along and finally long overdue work was done in the area of battery development. Since the first cellphone came along batteries have roughly become half as small and half as cheap every five years.
Shai Agassi's eco-friendly company are building their
first EV car
network in Israel essentially as a test market. Better Place aim
to only use renewable energy such as solar and wind to power their electric
car stations. To help the EV car industry gather pace in their country the
government of Israel is offering potential EV purchasers a tax bonus. The
first charging station opened in Israel in December 2008 and Better Place
have pre-sold enough contracts to make the battery swap model viable.
The company have chosen not to deploy their networks in multiple countries
at the same time but instead one country at a time. This may be due to the
extreme cost involved in setting each up. By taking this approach they'll
be able to prove the viability of the business and learn lessons as they
deploy the first couple of networks. The disadvantage of this approach is
they're potentially leaving the door open for a competitor to take the initiative.
In the U.S. deployment is to be further divided into individual states.
Australia, Ontario, Oregon and California have announced Better Place EV
networks for the future. Of these, Australia will be the first to see a
full scale network after the test network program has been completed. Sydney,
Melbourne and Brisbane are to be connected initially in 2012. Adelaide and
Perth will join the Australian network a year later. Deutsche Bank analysed
the Australian business model and stated that 'Investors should be aware
that motor vehicle technology has the potential to change more significantly
over the next five years than it has in the past 100 years'. Their analysis
also found that an
Australian EV vehicle's running costs
would be less than half that of a petrol car under the Better Place system.
In Australia about 500 well placed battery stations would give similar coverage
to the existing 13,000 petrol stations in existence.
Better Place's idea tackles the two major
problems with EV cars
of range and purchase price however a problem they may encounter is the
restriction on customers of only buying one make of car. It might be better
to strike deals with some of the other car makers to give consumers more
choice. Ideally, any EV electric car would be able to swap their batteries
using the network but of course it would probably be an impossible task
for the robotic battery shuttle system. If the process was changed to manual
swapping of batteries then costs would probably soar. Besides this problem,
Better Place's idea of a swappable battery network is a great one. If they
can make buying, owning and running an EV car cheaper than running a traditional
car but as practical, with all the added environmental benefits, they could
be very successful.