Shai Agassi to Australian car industry: become the Saudi Arabia of plug-in cars
Project Better Place battery swap - Click above for hi-res image gallery
Better Place head Shai Agassi told the Australian car industry that it is looking at "certain extinction" unless it moves towards plug-in vehicles. Never one to let a good quote go by as he tours the world promiting EVs – he recently told the Chinese that the future of the electric car rests on their shoulders – Agassi said that since all new cars will be electric in 20 years (a bold claim), Australia could become the Saudi Arabia of the 21st Century if they quickly start making EVs and the batteries needed to power them. During his Deakins 2009 Eco-Innovation speech in Melbourne, Agassi said: A billion electric car batteries will need to be made - that is the biggest industrial opportunity in the world today... Australia can pick whether to be an exporter of iron ore, phosphate and lithium, or of kilometres [in the form of batteries].
Better Place is working on an EV infrastructure in Australia that would be in place by late 2012, according to The Age. If Better Place can get just 50,000 cars in Australia to use their battery swap technology, the company will break even, Better Place's Brumby Thornley told The Age. Agassi predicted that electric cars will "quickly drop" to around $20,000 (U.S.) once economies of scale are in place.
Gallery: Better Place battery swap station
[Source: The Age]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Carlos 10:27AM (7/27/2009)
No way, the better place system has counted the days because who want a exclusive and expensive standar when you could get other better and cheaper opensource, like Elektrobay?
Reply
Dave 11:22AM (7/27/2009)
"Agassi predicted that electric cars will "quickly drop" to around $20,000 (U.S.) once economies of scale are in place."
I suppose that is possible if the EV comes without a battery and consumers subscribe separately to Better Place.
Reply
lne937s 12:04PM (7/27/2009)
I was thinking about the at-scale price drop over the weekend. I was in Flushing Chinatown and there was a Kiosk selling Li Ion electric mopeds. A model with a 60 mile range and top speed of 30 mph was $500. A model with a 25 mph top speed and 40 mile range was $350... This is cheaper than gas powered mopeds with similar performance. It is also about 1/10th the price of what similar electric models were costing a few years ago... with better performance.
There is nothing inherently expensive about an electric car. The amount of lithium in a battery (even if derived from seawater, which is one of the most expensive methods) is comparable to the price of aluminum in an engine block. An electric car is mechanically much more simple with far fewer moving parts... What it doesn't have is years of development to increase efficiency. Imagine if you had to make an emissions-compliant internal combustion car from scratch without a century of mass-market development behind it what the cost would be to produce a handful of examples. I have a feeling that one day electric vehicles may even be less expensive than their more mechanically complex internal combustion counterparts.
Rain 12:52PM (7/27/2009)
I disagree,that all vehicles will be electric in twenty years.
The ICE will hold the distance advantage for many years until the Hydrogen Hybrids become the mainstream.
I predict that Electrics will be the next high performance cars with over a
thousand horsepower and similar torque/nm numbers.
Reply
Chris M 3:08PM (7/27/2009)
I'd say it depends on how quickly battery development goes. We've already seen new types of Lithium batteries demonstrated in the lab that could increase energy density from 5x to 20x that of current LiIon batteries. When these come to market at a reasonable price, we could be seeing EVs with 1,000 mile range, or over 500 mile EVs with smaller lighter battery packs. When that happens, neither gassers nor H2 fuel cells will be able to compete.
The only unknown is how long that is going to take, but less than 20 years is certainly possible.