BREAKING: $200 M electric car company, Project Better Place, launch video 10 AM Est
by Lascelles Linton on Oct 29th 2007 at 9:04AM 
We told you about Ex-SAP head Shai Agassi getting a $200 M investment to create an electric car company in August. Now, that electric car comany has a name , Project Better Place, and it launches in a matter of hours with a video presentation at the company's website.
We will, of course, have much more on this new electric car company but while you wait, there are articles from Businessweek and the New York Times already about the new company. It seems that "several" electric cars will have a leasing model, batteries can be swapped out at stations, and pilot projects will start "early" next year with mass deployments in 2010.
The Case for the Electric Car
Shai Agassi, CEO and Founder
Project Better Place Launch
Monday, October 29, 2007 10:00 AM ET
[Source: Project Better Place]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Kardax 10:35AM (10/29/2007)
It looks like they're pushing for a battery-swap infrastructure, and cars that can use it. This is something that gets suggested all the time as the silver bullet to EV range problems.
The problem they'll quickly discover, I think, is that most people's daily commutes fit in the battery's range. Most customers will be happy to charge overnight at home. This pretty much kills the economic viability of a "charging station".
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Dave B 10:45AM (10/29/2007)
Agreed. Why don't they focus on a quick-charge battery? If they want a charging station fine...but it only makes sense in areas that are densely populated.
A network like the one proposed mise well be hydrogen!
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rick 10:56AM (10/29/2007)
eventually they find the Altair battery with 25,000 cycles and they will stop swapping bateries. but it's good that they bring big focus to the space.
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Simon 11:34AM (10/29/2007)
#1 I think you are forgetting that not everyone lives in a house with its own garage. For those living in a apartment or a house without off street parking an EV is out of the question due to not having anywhere to charge it. Even if you do have off street parking you still need cover from rain.
From what I've seen around where I live people tend to use their garage as a dumping ground for their junk rather than park the car in it.
Having an infrastructure like this also allows you to travel long distances. As you rightly point out the range is fine for day to day driving but what if you want to get away for the weekend or travel to visit friends or relatives.
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Kardax 11:46AM (10/29/2007)
Simon: EVs today aren't viable for apartment/condo residents, but it's arguably a lot cheaper to electrify a garage or parking stall than to build a battery swap station. It'll definitely be a lot cheaper for the resident.
Battery swapping isn't the only way to get long range. AltairNano-style quick charges are theoretically possible (though they'll cost far more than a home charge, due to infrastructure expenses, but probably less than a battery swap), or Volt-style integrated range extender, or tzero-style towable range extender. The nice thing about these other options is EV makers are free to design their cars any way they want, using whatever battery technology (and shape!) they want, which suggests non-swappable EVs will be all-around better than ones that have to make compromises to work with a standard swapping system.
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Simon 12:10PM (10/29/2007)
Kardax: I agree that the idea of swapping batteries has its drawbacks. It will be interesting to see what their costs come out as vs the other options such as AltairNano.
I don't think standardisation of battery size etc is a bad thing though. It would allow production on a mass scale and there is no reason why you wouldn't be able to improve the battery technology while staying within the same form factor. Maybe a selection of form factors will be offered depending on cost and needs of the car.
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Kent Beuchert 2:28PM (10/29/2007)
This might have been a god idea 2 years ado, ASSUMING as he does, that battery technology ain't going to get any better. He also missed the prospect of range extender small biofuel engines,
more or less making his product obsolete. He also depends upon either 1) building all EVs himself and thus controlling the desing of the battery pack, or 2) getting every EV maker to agree to design their cars using his battery pack and mounting it so that it can be quickly swapped.
Neither of these things has a chance in hell of happening. At best he will end up with a bunch of racharge stations that MAY still be in business when batteries become fast charging and (unlike the Altairs) high energy capacity, and affordable and lightweight. Who knows when that will happen?
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GenWaylaid 1:50PM (10/29/2007)
Have they actually considered what the battery pack would weigh? Even lithium batteries have a mass of at least 10 kg/kWh. At typical EV efficiencies, that's 2 kg for every mile of range. A practial EV, therefore, would carry at least 100 kg of batteries, possibly several times that. The weight is comparable to an IC engine and transmission.
Swapping a whole battery pack as a unit, therefore, would require jacks, winches, or some really clever design work (like the pack has little wheels that pop out of the bottom and it rolls out of the car on its own). Splitting the pack up into many sub-batteries makes hand-swapping possible, if a tad physically demanding. Regardless of the approach taken, the car's suspension will not enjoy the large weight fluctuations of a battery swap. Would you use your car if you had to swap the engine several times on every long trip?
The biggest problem with battery swapping is standardization. If everyone uses the same battery package, it's fine. Odds are, however, that each company will be pushing its own standard in the hopes of driving its rivals out of the market. Incompatible charging ports were one of the less appealing features of the first generation of EVs because they restricted charging locations to a handful of specially-built stations.
In the end, battery swapping is only viable if the batteries used have a) a very high power/weight density, and b) an unavoidably long charging time. Currently, however, manufacturers like Altairnano and A123 claim just the opposite. If fast charging is possible, it is a much simpler operation than a battery swap.
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James Anderson Merritt 6:29PM (10/29/2007)
Fast-charging isn't something that will happen at home. Home power-lines simply can't deliver enough current. The equipment necessary to deliver sufficient energy to completely recharge an EV with reasonable range in 10-15 minutes is going to be expensive. The question is, which approach is more sustainable over the long haul? Will it be better to invest in a network of high-voltage/high-current commercial fast-charge stations, which would always be in limited demand (mostly for long-haul trips) and would be rendered more obsolete with each new advance in battery capacity? Or to empower innumerable storefront operations, which could trickle-charge modules at leisure, and, due to the low capital investment involved, could enter or leave the market as demand changed? The same modules that would work in a car could work in a house, at a job-site, or anywhere else electric power were needed (or needed immediately, in the case of pre-charged modules). Done right, the module interface system could accommodate and manage a mix of cells in one module, or the ganging of several modules, each containing a different single type of cell from the others.
I remember people going on about the AltairNano, the EEstore, and other future technologies, a couple of years ago, when Tesla described its 6831-cell Energy Storage System. "Why plan to ship something that's already obsolete?" the wags scoffed, much as some contributors did in the comments column, above. These days, however, Tesla is close to production, having passed nearly all safety and envrionmental tests to date, and they are giving exciting test drives to those who ignored the naysayers and put deposit money down early. I think it will be much the same with the modular battery project, with one important difference. If and when more advanced, higher capacity batteries become available, a properly designed power management and interface system will be able to use them to extend the range or running time of any equipment that gets its power through the modular interface. The interface provides a stable platform for design, and allows for division of labor: the interface vendor can do the low-level work (or can liasion with battery manufacturers) to ensure that new, advanced batteries are compatible with and accessible through the interface.
We'll see what happens. But in my opinion, this project could both enable and shape several industries, including alternative energy homebuilding and mass-market Electric Vehicles. Time will tell.
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Kardax 7:38PM (10/29/2007)
James Anderson Merritt: A battery swap station will not have "low capital investment" as you claim. You need sophisticated robotics to properly install the replacement pack, plus you need to buy up an inventory of replacement packs to get started, plus build the automated storage system for the packs. It needs to be a decently-sized inventory, too, in case you get multiple customers in a short amount of time. And you're still going to need a very high wattage charging system to keep a good supply of fully-charged packs ready.
Can it be done? Absolutely. Will it be cheap? No way. You must remember that the customer, directly or otherwise, still has to pay for the electricity going into the pack, only now they also have to pay for robot maintenance, the charging station's land expenses, plus more to help recover the cost of construction. A die-hard greenie might go for this, but anyone with a bit of financial sensibility will go other ways. So what's going to happen is "Project Better Place" is going to spend their $200 million getting a couple experimental prototype stations running, not make enough revenue to even cover property taxes, and eventually fold.
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Chris M 10:36PM (10/29/2007)
The website mentioned both charging stations and battery swap stations. Considering that a charging station would be much less expensive to build, I'd expect many more chargers to be installed than swap stations.
One question I have for them: Considering how many different electrics and plug-in hybrids are planned in the next few years, how are you going to insure compatability of their products with your chargers or swap stations?
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len simpson 10:00AM (10/30/2007)
This idea should be stillborn as totally impractical!
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Ben Forrester 12:32PM (10/31/2007)
Battery compatibility, package swap, etc. not withstanding, fact is, we will, most likely soon all be driving EV's and no matter the universal compatibility of the different vehicles energy source they will eventually all have to be recharged. Long range driving presents an acute and particular potential problem. I think, Better Place might consider the use of flat bed tractor/trailer rigs. These vehicles are mobile, legally can pull a 53' long x 8 1/2' wide trailer which gives you 450.5 sq. ft. One could mount a very powerful generator and power it by the use of an auxillary pulley then use the power of the tractors diesel engine to generate and store a substantial amount of electricity which could then be used to recharge these EV's. Strategically placed throughout the U.S. in places such as interstate rest areas, truck stops, etc. and even go out and recharge a down vehicle much as a service truck at present goes out with gasoline for motorists when needed. Also, there is merit (theoretically) using either wind or solar to power such units. Better Place you are on the right track.
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jack marchand 6:14PM (12/06/2007)
Some ideas for battery swap stations
check this;
http://trillions.topcities.com/electriCar.html
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jack marchand 4:50PM (12/08/2007)
Some ideas for battery swap stations
check this;
http://trillions.topcities.com/electriCar.html
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jack marchand 4:25PM (12/06/2007)
Dec4. 2007
Gentlemen
Check this web page;
http://globalsys.topcities.com/electriCar.html
more data available
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johnny 5:08PM (1/15/2008)
James Merritt I don't know if you ever come across the Rav4 EV and EV1 recharging ports. They delivery virtually the same 80% recharge in 15 minutes or so. The ports are about 500 USD. I'm sorry to say that people already can quick recharge since 1996. And it can be done at home.
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Scott 5:11PM (1/15/2008)
Unfortunately having all the same battery design goes against competitive business and capitalism. You wont' need more than a handful of suppliers to deliver the design and since there's virtually only one design , if it miraculously happens, more companies can't do business without patent licensing.
Battery swapping will work for their own cars and batteries but I doubt coordination with others would work that easily.
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