Better Place

Renault says the recent bankruptcy filing by battery-swapping technology firm Better Place will do little to dissuade the automaker (and sister company Nissan) from continuing to try and boost electric-vehicle sales worldwide. Better Place's decision "does not at all call into question the ...

It came as a shock when Better Place founder Shai Agassi was ousted as CEO last October, but today's announcement that the company will enter bankruptcy proceedings is a little less of a surprise. After all, since Agassi left, there have been layoffs, another CEO departure and a shut-down of ...

Shai Agassi has been pondering what it will take for electric vehicles to beat cheap gasoline-powered competitors. And he got some advice from former president Bill Clinton in 2006: giving away the car is a sure way to succeed. Clinton offered this advice a year before Agassi launched Better ...

Shai Agassi's faith remains strong. The Better Place founder, who was removed as the company's CEO in October, still believes that a company that powers electric vehicles with swappable batteries and a subscription-based revenue model can be successful ... if operated properly. While declining ...

Better Place, the electric-vehicle battery-swapping technology developer, is swapping out its US and Australia operations to save cash and will focus its efforts on Denmark and Israel. The company, which had operated offices in California's Silicon Valley, referred to Denmark and Israel as "its ...

Better Place has long promoted itself to the electric-vehicle advocate community as the expert in battery-swapping technology. Turns out, the company is proficient at swapping out its CEOs, too. Evan Thornley, who became CEO in October, had been chief of the company's Australia operations before ...

Better Place continues to be a bit of a misnomer as issues with the electric-vehicle battery-switching network have delayed Renault's plans to debut its Fluence Z.E. electric vehicle in Australia, Car Advice reports. Renault, whose EV is designed to allow for battery swapping, was originally ...

Better Place might not be such a good one when it comes to employment, given reports that the electric vehicle infrastructure network might fire as many as 200 workers. According to the Israels business publication Globes, Better Place, which at one point employed as many as 400 people in ...

San Francisco will get a treat of a different kind in 2014 when battery-swapping network builder Better Place starts serving a fleet of electric-powered taxis in the Bay Area, Forbes reports. Using funds from a $3 million grant from the California Energy Commission, Better Place will launch the ...

Founder out, more cash in. That could be the synopsis for the past month of electric-vehicle battery-swapping network Better Place, which booted its founder and is now working on selling about $100 million in company equity by issuing company stock. Israel Corp., Better Place's biggest ...

Our friend David Herron recently discovered that charging infrastructure supplier Better Place has added another automaker to its international network – Coda – though the company had yet to announce it. Better Place is known for partnering with Renault overseas to expand its network ...

Rough starts and local criticism are nothing new in the green car start-up world, and it looks like Better Place is going through another all-too-familiar trope: CEO shake-up. Better Place's CEO, Shai Agassi, has been "removed" by the company's board of directors in a surprise act. The previous ...

Based on the early numbers, Better Place is having a tough time meetings its initial sales target in its primary market of Israel of 4,000 electric vehicles in the first year, but the official word is that the slow start is meeting expectations. How slow? Since selling the first vehicles in July ...

If you're campaigning for Mitt Romney and believe in the electrification of transportation, you're kind of between a rock and a hard place. While Romney previously had supported electric and other non-petroleum vehicles, more recently, he's shifted his focus to freedom from foreign oil through ...

Things just got a little better for Better Place. The electric-vehicle battery-swapping company said Tuesday that it received a 40-million euro (U.S. $50 million) loan from the European Investment Bank, marking the company's first credit line after raising all of its existing funding in the form ...

Better Place waited until its fleet of Renault Fluence plug-in vehicles was just about officially, commercially operational in Israel before letting customers know that the cost to drive the vehicles will be less than expected. Better Place's official launch, which happened this past weekend, ...

Electric vehicle "miles" company Better Place will likely go public within two years to take advantage of what many expect will be broader electric-vehicle adoption throughout the world, Bloomberg News reported, citing an interview with company founder Shai Agassi last week. Better Place will ...

Better Place, the Silicon Valley company founded by former high-tech executive and Israel native Shai Agassi in 2007, has delivered the first 100 electric cars to Israeli customers. After years of tests and trial programs, the deliveries mark a big step in the company's efforts to build out an ...

If you want to try out one of Better Place's electric vehicles, you'd have to move to a country where the project is establishing its infrastructure or else wait for it to come to your neighborhood. At least that's how it was looking until now. Because the latest announcement from the ...

Better Place continues to play the investment alphabet game, with the company's Series C funding round netting $200 million of new financing from the likes of General Electric Co (not a surprise at all) and UBS. Even though many in the automotive industry are still skeptical of Better Place's ...