Better place battery exchange stations

By it would be bankrupt and one of the many casualties of the first wave of cleantech investing. Now serial entrepreneurs John de Souza and Khaled Hassounah are reviving the battery swapping business model with a startup called Ample and an approach that they say solves some of the problems that Better Place could never address at a time when the adoption of electric vehicles is creating a far larger addressable market.

In , there were , electric vehicles on roads, according to data from Statista , a number which had grown to 4. Bacon, founder of the multibillion-dollar hedge fund, Moore Capital Management. You either put a fixed battery system or an Ample battery plate. Without really changing the same vehicle. Uber is the first step. Ample is focused on fleets first and is in talks with multiple, undisclosed municipalities to get their cars added to the system.

So far, Ample has done thousands of swaps, according to Hassounah, with just Uber drivers alone. With the five fleets that Ample expects to deploy with later this year the company expects to have the fleet managers and owners pay for charging. So the initiative developed a charging unit for swapping batteries. Children would use their laptops over the course of the day and take them home, and when they needed a fresh charge, they would swap out the batteries.

Abandoned Better Place battery-swap station, Israel, April [photo: Brian of London] To do that, Better Place would offer battery-electric cars with not only a comprehensive network of public charging stations, but a web of battery-swap stations to enable long-distance travel throughout Israel.

Drivers could swap out depleted batteries for fresh ones in less than five minutes via drive-through swap stations. They could even make reservations to do so on the in-car telematics system. The Better Place Fluence ZE was an adaptation of a conventional French mid-size sedan, with a kilowatt horsepower electric motor driving the front wheels and a re-engineered trunk to allow the kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery to be dropped out the bottom at swap stations.

The Better Place service would sell the cars and packages of kilometers to be covered each year, just as mobile-phone service has been sold in packages of minutes. In essence, while the program got up and running in Israel, it never attracted anything like the number of customers it needed to get to the necessary scale. Beyond that, we'd suggest reading the article. It's worth it.

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The driver pulls in, and the depleted battery is quickly replaced with a fresh one, without anyone having to leave the vehicle. The process takes less time than it does to fill a tank of liquid fuel. Because most electric vehicles will be charging during the evenings while at home, the batteries become distributed storage for clean electricity.

Australia possesses wind farms throughout the country, as does California. Hawaii ranked 4th in the nation in renewable energy use in and plans to continue their efforts. Due to the open, standards-based approach that Better Place has adopted in the development of its batteries, there will be many manufacturers contributing to the pool of available batteries. This will maintain a steady supply and stable prices as more and more nations join them in their efforts to remake transportation as a sustainable service.

Electric Cars. Better Place does not make cars. They partner with leading automakers to continue offering consumers the wide range of make and model choices they have come to expect. The Renault-Nissan Alliance is the first automaker with the vision and foresight to join them, building zero-emission electric cars for Better Place network infrastructure.

They are talking with other major car manufacturers around the world about doing the same. These electric cars, sport utility vehicles and other models from leading manufacturers will look and perform much like what we drive today. They will be subject to the same safety standards, but will not have tailpipes or generate harmful emissions. They are quieter, more efficient, and more reliable than gas-powered cars.

For their part, they aim to accelerate the transformation to a sustainable electric solution. Battery Technology. The re-chargeable batteries that power Better Place electric cars have long been used in other industries, and are now ready for use in electric cars on a global scale. In the last decade, the electrical power needs of laptop computers, mobile phones and power tools have driven advances in the efficiency and lifespan of lithium ion batteries.

These advances have already been incorporated in the mass production of electric vehicle batteries. Today, rechargeable lithium ion batteries can reliably deliver driving distances of over miles on a single charge and replenish themselves at approximately one minute per minute of drive. Better Place is building that infrastructure, an electric recharge grid.

As batteries have become mass-produced for the electric car network, economies of scale have pushed costs down and continue to lead to more technical improvements. This makes transportation as a sustainable service an even more affordable alternative to gas-based. A number of already successful lithium ion battery companies are in place to meet growing demand.

Their first lithium-ion battery partners include Automotive Energy Supply Corp. Better Place remains committed to a battery-agnostic approach that best serves this dynamic market. Battery Exchange Stations. In addition to widely deployed charge spots, the Better Place network will provide fully-automated battery exchange stations. These Better Place battery exchange stations are even more efficient and convenient than conventional gas stations.

Each is roughly the size of your average living room. Like the charging spots, they are fully automated. A driver pulls in, puts the car in the neutral gear, and sits back. The battery exchange station does all the work. The depleted battery is removed, and a fully-charged replacement is installed. In under three minutes, the car is back on the road. The battery exchange stations will be able to accommodate any Better Place-compliant vehicle.

All manufactured batteries will be stocked so that any electric vehicle with a swappable battery, regardless of make or model, can pull in and be serviced. Charge Spots. Within a few short years, these units will be available for use in parking garages, retail spaces, street curbs, as well as within the homes of drivers everywhere you need them to be so that they can keep the batteries topped off.

But what will these charging spots look like, and how will they function? Each unit is about the same size as a standard parking meter. When an electric vehicle pulls up and parks, on-board software instructs the vehicle to link-up with the charging station until the battery is charged. All vehicles within the Better Place model will have the same plug that allows them to charge at these spots, regardless of the make, model or power requirements of the electric car being driven.

Cars outside the Better Place model can re-charge their batteries as guest vehicles, so long as the driver acquires an easily-installed converter. This allows for the growth and promotion of all zero-emission vehicles on the road, for the benefit of our health, planet and economies. The charge spots function at 3. To find out, I spoke to company officials, industry experts, and electric-car executives at rival automakers. Electric cars — prior to Better Place — are neither of those things.

To make refueling convenient, Better Place invented automated battery-switching stations; they deploy robots that slide under the car, remove a depleted battery, and replace it with a fully charged one in about five minutes.

These battery-swapping stations work faster than chargers; the company has built 37 of them across Israel. By retaining ownership of the battery, Better Place is able to reduce the sticker price of the car, and upgrade the battery as the technology improves. Like wireless phone companies that discount their hardware and make the money back by selling minutes, Better Place reduces the price of the car and charges its owners a monthly fee for the battery and electricity, based on how many miles they travel.

In fact, leasing a Better Place car in Israel costs about 20 percent less than a Toyota Prius or Honda Insight hybrid, the company says. In his heyday, Agassi liked to tell people that Better Place would eventually be able to give cars away, and still turn a profit But such rosy projections never came close to materializing.

Local authorities, whose permission was needed to build battery-switching stations, put up unexpected roadblocks, slowing progress, company officials said. Another shortcoming: Better Place assumed that other automakers would build vehicles that are compatible with its battery-swapping technology, but so far only Renault has done so.

Marketing has been another challenge: The company is asking its customers not only to embrace a new technology, but an unfamiliar business model that is hard to explain. He said battery swapping might make sense for taxis or fleets, but not on a broad scale. My test drive with Better Place was a mixed bag. On the round trip from Tel Aviv to the Negev, I had to switch batteries twice, going slightly out of my way both times.

On the plus side, the battery-switching station, which resembled an automated car wash, worked perfectly: I was in and out in about five minutes, without having to leave my car. And I loved the instant torque and the quiet of the Fluence EV. Better Place customers seem to be satisfied, too. Although their numbers are small, electric vehicle owners worldwide are generally happy with the new technology. In the U. The Volt overcomes range anxiety by adding a small gasoline engine to its electric drive train, while the all-electric Nissan Leaf depends on a network of public charging stations.

All the companies offer home chargers to their owners. The company sold more than cars a month in January and February, accounting for about 0. In December, only 23 were sold. Others, though, say the Better Place story underscores the fundamental challenge facing the electric car. Without battery-switching, pure electric cars have a limited range and they take a long time to recharge.

But the administration, as well as the industry, has yet to provide a clear answer to a simple question about electric cars and companies like Better Place: What, exactly, is the consumer problem that EVs are trying to solve? Are they about saving money in the long run, not having to worry about rising gas prices, reducing the environmental impact of driving, or just enjoying the ride?