Shai Agassi talks about Better Place, $20,000 EV, batteries extra
Shai Agassi has big ideas when it comes to electric cars. He wants to build networks of public charging outlets and battery swap stations. He also wants to sell electric cars with a battery subscription plan similar to cell phone calling plans. In an interview with CNET Agassi revealed that he wants to sell his electric car for about $20,000 before any tax credits. With a $7,500 federal credit that price comes down to almost $12,000. In addition to that price, you still have to pay for miles of battery use. Just like cell phones, Better Place plans to offer a number of mileage plans depending on how far you want to drive.
While this may or may not prove to be a financially viable model, the far more controversial aspect of the company's plan is the battery swapping. The company plans to demonstrate its robotized battery swapping system in Japan next month. So far, only Renault-Nissan has committed to building a car to support this system, but it remains to be seen whether this will truly be technically viable. No automaker that we have spoken to other than Tesla has any plans to go down the path of exchangeable batteries. Without standardized pack formats it's not clear that any swap system can be viable. Either way, Agassi wants to launch his system in Israel in 2011.
Gallery: Better Place
[Source: CNET]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
DF 11:02AM (4/28/2009)
This guy should be in "Letterman" he is an amazing comedian. LOL
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Zeph 11:06AM (4/28/2009)
All this man is trying to do is introduce artificial scarcity into the Electric car model.
I want to own my batteries, I want them to have some sort of trade in value for recycling, I want the technology to be developed on by third parties and I want it plug in to the existing powergrid.
This person does not address these concerns, all he does is try to corner the electric car range extension market and to introduce proprietary architecture into what should be open technology.
I am not a fan of his spiel.
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DF 11:20AM (4/28/2009)
Absolutely, Zeph !!!!!
Vuki 11:25AM (4/28/2009)
I agree. He is attempting to monopolize the ecosystem. But I don't see him having much success - even Nissan who is their only official Auto supporter is turning to other solutions, like their recent announcements with fast-charge infrastructure player ECOtality.
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srschrier 9:23PM (4/28/2009)
So does this mean every "recharge station" owner has to maintain an inventory of battery packs equivalent to the number of electric cars on the roads? Is this electric car system based entirely on physically exchanging the batteries instead of rapid recharging?
Hypothetical question, what if there were five thousand electric cars with exchangeable battery packs within a given geographical region and two hundred drivers are traveling along the same roads at the same time to their destination. They all need battery "exchange" at about the same time and arrive at the same exchange station. What then?
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win39 12:15PM (4/28/2009)
This is not the solution either. Just remember some of the places where you have gassed up in your life. If anyone thinks one of these mulitmillion dollar changing stations is going to show up in Battle, Nevada or in Death Valley, they are smoking something. Considering the range of an electric car, as he does, you will need to "refuel" 3 times as often compared to the 300 mile range that seems to be expected these days. That means there will have to be new "refueling" points added in places that have never had them. He talks about using today's technology to not delay changeover, but it seems okay to him to take the time to completely rebuild the infrastructure. Yeah. That will not take long. The only immediately viable tech seems to be hybrids or diesel for all purpose automobiles and electric cars that never have long trips. Unlike the yellow Ferrari sighting I made on one trip, you will never see a Tesla on a lonely road in Idaho unless it was trucked there with a fuel consuming hauler.
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jake 12:55PM (4/28/2009)
His main point isn't the swap stations, it's getting the price of EVs to more affordable than gas cars, I don't know how viable it is as a business model but I can certainly see the appeal. Swap stations may not be built everywhere, but charging stations will. Remember an EV is not the same as fueling a gas car. You can add a plug virtually everywhere you go: home, work, shopping places. A typical car probably stays parked 90% of the time and travels only 10% of the time, only exceptions are probably on road trips.
And they don't necessarily have to use all swap stations. They can offer rapid charge stations; the cost is about $100k for each high power charger (100+kW), which can give you about 100 miles of range in 10 minutes. An 8 charger station would be comparable in cost to a typical 8 pump gas station.
brn 12:17PM (4/28/2009)
I think you're being too critical. He's trying to address some of the major issues with the consumer EV market.
He's lowering the cost of entry by excluding the most expensive part.
He's protecting your EV investment by excluding the part that has the most potential for improvement.
You buy your EV for the price of a petrol vehicle. You go to the fueling station and pay the same rate you would for gasoline. It's a much easier transition for people.
Building the infrastructure on the other hand....
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PeterG 12:37PM (4/28/2009)
All sales spiel, no substance. I wouldn't buy a used car from this guy.
Is the current up to $7500 tax credit based on battery capacity. If you don't have a battery with your car, why would you get the credit?
I also looked at his ridiculous numbers he offered up in another interview on his cost mile scheme to the driver. He was an order of magnitude from it making any financial sense.
For this to actually make any money it would end up costing more to rent his batteries than it would to buy gas. That is even before you factor the multi-million/billion dollar network of charging swapping stations.
How many people are willing to go from spending $150 month on gas to spending $200/month on battery rental?
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Chris M 6:06PM (4/28/2009)
He is trying to make EVs cost competitive to gassers, so it is likely that the per mile cost would be less than a gasser. The price of electricity certainly is a lot less, about 1/4 to 1/5 the cost of gas - even more if gas prices go up. That does allow PBP to add a substantial markup to cover the cost of the batteries yet still undercut the cost of driving on gasoline.
Snowdog 6:53AM (4/29/2009)
Chris. You are failing to take into account huge battery consumable costs. It swamps the minor savings of Gas vs Electricity. To go 40 miles you might save $1 on gas vs Electricy, but it costs you $4 more on the cost of the battery life you just consumed.
BEVs still aren't economically viable, because of how expensive and short lived batteries are.
jzj 1:13PM (4/28/2009)
1. The car is inexpensive;
2. Range anxiety is removed;
3. The battery -- the most problematic part of an EV in terms of expense, risk, and improvement -- will not be the owner's headache.
Paying for distance traveled makes sense no matter how you look at it, because that's what we all do. There is only a question of price point, because of course the consumer / consumer organizations will compare the cost of ownership over distance.
But ultimately, as the article correctly observes, this is all academic if manufacturers don't agree to make relatively uniform and neatly-removeable battery packs. (I consider is a bad sign that Nissan's car will not have a swappable battery pack, and since Nissan-Renault is building the BP car you'd think it'd be the first to consider going that route.) Still, I live in a city (San Francisco), and if there was a charge + swap station here I would instantly go this way if BP can bring its own car here.
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Zeph 1:25PM (4/28/2009)
Electric cars should be inexpensive anyway, they have less moving parts than combustion cars. You can make a drivetrain and engine assembly for one of these things with something like 7 parts...
Range anxiety would not be that big of an issue if people were allowed to sell their domestic power to the road from their homes with some sort of profit margin. Quick recharge services would popup as part of insurance packages. And people still run out of gas, nothing can counter a badly planned trip or distraction except some sort of last resort service. It does not have to be a battery swap station every 150 miles.
Batteries are not that risky, I've never seen one melt or go up in smoke apart from on blogs and news services which I am not sure I believe now that so many people use it to bash the electric car (conflict of interests). They shouldn't be that expensive with a market of scale. And if they improve so does the range so people will just trade in the old packs for recycling. I for one expect a 500 mile range battery with a 15 minute charge time from a dedicated outlet in less than 10 years. And thats enough to invalidate this whole battery changing infrastructure, which is nothing but a control grid and which will take more than a decade to be setup anyway.
They, them being the oligarchy, just want to control energy to make it scarce, with scarcity being an economic paradigm that serves their preservation of power agenda.
jzj 1:40PM (4/28/2009)
Zeph,
Oligarchy? In electric power generation and distribution? Not at all sure what you might be thinking, as our utilities are government-regulated and the future holds all sorts of opportunity for distributed power generation and opportunity for segmented power distribution (again, through government-mandated opportunity to universalize the grid and allow all sorts of agreements between generators and block purchasers).
In other regards, I'm not sure I agree with the magic battery theory (500 miles/10 minute charge) as generally theory to lab lags at least several years and lab to market lags several years and presently no one has prepared any blue prints for the magic battery.
As to your range anxiety response... huh? Batteries do indeed have limited range. If you want to take a trip you have to deal with that, and since the option of 10-minute charging does not exist a battery swap would be the only solution.
A last thought: for non-home garage owners -- which I'd WAG to be 30% of car owners -- a battery swap is the ONLY solution, unless you want to spend a chunk of your time waiting for and then charging at a publicly-available charger.
jake 3:54PM (4/28/2009)
I wouldn't say battery swapping is 100% necessary. It appears their plan is mostly based on having plugs virtually everywhere there is a parking space. This should eliminate the charging concerns for most non-garage owners.
And there are high power chargers that exist which can charge a car for 80 miles of range in 10 minutes:
http://www.greencar.com/articles/hyundai-santa-fe-ev.php
Most fast chargers are used for lead acid airport baggage carriers, but they can be adopted for passenger cars. These can give you about 30-50 miles of range in 10 minutes.
http://www.minit-charger.com/airport_GSE/products/pricing.php
http://www.posicharge.com/2-4.html
The battery swap seems to be mostly there to shut people up going on about "range anxiety". If you can swap the battery faster than fueling a gas car and the car is cheaper than a gas car then there is little argument left against EVs.
@Zeph
A 300+ mile range battery pack is already possible (see Tesla's Model S, I've checked the numbers and they can built a 366 mile Roadster pack of the same weight & size of the current pack using existing 3.6Ah cells rather an 2.4Ah cells). The biggest issue with are the cost and weight. A mass manufacturer would rather build 3 100mile EVs rather than 1 300 mile EV unless you are talking about Tesla or another luxury EV. That is why I expect to continue to see 100-150 mile packs as most common even if we can make 500 mile packs in the future.
Even if they can make 500 mile packs that can charge in 15 minutes, I don't think you will ever see a charger to handle it. Current batteries can already charge faster than a typical charger can handle. The fastest charger demonstrated (250kW Aerovironment) can charge roughly 100-150 miles in 10 minutes or 150-225 miles in 15 minutes, the batteries can probably handle an even faster charge but the problem is this charger uses more power than most power sources can handle. A 500 mile 15 minute charger will draw 600-800kW of power which is enough to power a large supermarket or two or a hospital or 150-250 homes (might be even more like 400+ depending where you get the numbers). I don't see a charger with this kind of draw ever being practical.
sp 2:25PM (4/28/2009)
Why charge by the mile? If I drive like I am a race car driver and my friend drives carefully and accelerates slowly then I would put way more wear on the battery. They should charge by energy throughput obviously...
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Vuki 2:40PM (4/28/2009)
Batter swapping is NOT the only solution - far from it. Fast-charging can charge a battery in 15-25 minutes - how long does a typical gas station stop take, 10 minutes?
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brn 4:30PM (4/28/2009)
More like five minutes with self-serve.
Also, isn't that kind of rapid charge rough on the battery pack?
Vuki 4:54PM (4/28/2009)
Apparently it doesn't damage the battery. Check out: http://www.etecevs.com/PHEV-activities/fast-charge-solutions.php for more info.
Jakob 5:08PM (4/29/2009)
I´m a dane and Shai Agassis Better Place is starting out over here..
But its a stupid idea.. The infrastructure will cost a FORTUNE and it will cost a lot to maintain.
It will be up and running in about 2 years from now - and at the same time batteries will be out with larger capacity.
What he should do, is to install poweroutlets with +100A for quick charging the batteries instead. Let people buy a cup of coffee and charge 25% in 10 minutes.
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