Better Place aims to solve electric car battery range problems
Better Place are a company focused on building networks of electric car battery swapping stations. They hope such infrastructure will be the tipping point towards electric car acceptance. Their networks will also offer battery recharging for those who want to leave their car with them for the necessary time.Better Place were founded in October 2007 by Shai Agassi, a man who previously jointly owned two software companies with his father before selling them to SAP for $US410 million. His goal in life now is to wean the world off its dependance on oil (and no doubt make a lot of money on the way). Better Place are based in Palo Alto, California, but they have truly global ambitions. Their large ambitions got off to a pretty healthy start because they managed to amass hundreds of millions of dollars of investment and arranged tax breaks for their company with the governments of some countries around the world.
By building a network of electric car battery swapping stations the large problem of insufficient range is solved. The idea works something like this. When your electric car is getting low on power an onboard GPS would tell you where your closest swapping stations are. You drive to a battery swapping station, drive up a ramp and a battery shuttle robot will locate the battery on the bottom of the vehicle. It will then remove the depleted battery and replace it with the correct type of charged battery. The battery shuttle returns the depleted battery to a charging bay. You then drive away with no need to pay as your account will automatically be billed at the end of the month. The whole process takes only 2 minutes which is less time than conventional refuelling and was demonstrated to the public in May 09 in Japan.
It all sounds good in theory but its obviously a mammoth undertaking. One problem Better Place have is the multitude of different battery types, sockets and battery bay locations on the various electric vehicles. They've decided not to try and cater for all electric cars but instead have struck a deal with Renault-Nissan and will only service their vehicles. Renault will offer electric versions of existing cars, like the Megane, at competitive prices to similar gasoline models. The availability of cheap electric cars is another vital hurdle to overcome in the acceptance of electic car culture.
The first prototype produced by Renault was an electric Megane. It had a range of about 160 kilometres or 100 miles on a fully charged battery. Renault committed $US600 million between 2008 and 2011 to electric car development and easy to swap batteries. In September 09 they announced that the Renault Fluence ZE would be the first electric car available on the Better Place network.
Shai Agassi is confident that batteries are the new oil and is happy that urgent development is now taking place on them. He comments that, 'we had 90 years of no research'. Indeed, well into the 1980's batteries were heavy and bulky, toxic and yielded little power. It wasn't until the mobile phone industry demanded smaller batteries that significant progress was made. Since the first mobile phones arrived batteries have on average become 50% smaller and cheaper every 5 years.
Better Place is building its first electric vehicle network in Israel as a test market. It hopes that all the electricity used to power its networks will come from renewable energy such as solar and wind. Israel is offering buyers of new EV's in their country a tax bonus to generate interest. Better Place opened their first charging station in Israel in December 08 and they have already sold enough contracts in that country to make the battery swap network a viable business.
The company will deploy their networks on a country by country basis to begin with no doubt to prove viability and learn important lessons as they go. In the U.S, deployment will be state by state. Australia, Ontario, Oregon and California have announced future deployment of Better Place electric car networks. After the test markets Australia will be the first country to see a full scale network. Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane will be connected initially with a launch of the network in 2012. Adelaide and Perth will follow 12 months later. Deutsche Bank analysed the Australian model and reported 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'. The analysis concluded that at current fuel prices an electric car's running costs would be less than half that of a petrol car. Ultimately, Better Place believe that 500 well placed battery stations would give comparable coverage to the existing 13,000 petrol stations in Australia.
Better Place's electric car model solves the two problems of range and high initial cost of electric cars but I think one big problem they will have is the restriction that people may only buy Renault cars. They may find it better to do deals with other car makers to give consumers as much choice as possible. Ideally of course, any electric car would be able to use their network of stations but then its hard to see their robotic battery shuttle system working since there would be so many variations in battery layout between the cars. Batteries would need to be manually changed meaning extra labour and extra cost. Aside from the problem of only being able to use Renault electric cars, Better Place's vision of an interchangeable battery network is a great one. They've insured that their pricing will be cheap enough to make running an electric car far cheaper than running a traditional car. Their quick battery swap system means that drivers can be on their way again in 2 minutes. Its a great plan but an awful lot of work to implement it. Lets hope they can do it.