Will the Better Place EV battery scheme succeed?

[CraigD]

As we’ve discussed in the chemistry and environmental studies treads 20779 and Is peak oil a fraud? from "Does it matter if global warming is a fraud?”, the Better Place venture-backed private company is planning initial small regional rollouts of battery charging and switching stations for electric cars, with the intention of causing a paradigm shift that will cause massive disruption to the auto and oil industry, leading ultimately to the elimination of the gasoline engine altogether.

 

I’d like to discuss the engineering details of Better Place’s and similar systems, focusing on whether they’ll be commercially successful, and how they might be improved. Anybody interested?

[Buffy]

It's easy to roll up all the problems in the way of *complete* replacement of petrol for electric and say as a conclusion that "it'll never happen", but that's ignoring the fact that if there were a strategic decision to pick the *most feasible* first application for market penetration, that it would get is past the initial "early adopter" stage of the technology.

 

I've seen two separate programs in different places that really ought to be put together: Los Angeles has started to provide credits for parking lots to reserve spaces for electric vehicles that are fitted with recharging stations. San Francisco has a program that provides--for a standard monthly fee--the ability to walk into a lot and just drive off with a car: allowing people to not have to own or find a parking space for a car and be able to have access to one whenever they want. Gosh it would be great to put those two together.

 

It seems obvious to me that in the short term, the poor range and long charging times for electric vehicles is going to mean that the focus has to be on local commuting as the primary use for them. And rentals seem to be the only way to do that without forcing people to actually buy and house more vehicles than they really want to. And to make it workable, the recharging has to be everywhere, which means starting it all in a single metropolitan area where it initially gets subsidies to make it worthwhile.

 

I know that plug-in hybrids have been suggested as a bridging mechanism to build demand for plugging in, but what I've seen so far is that people who are looking at them are all planning to "charge at home, buy gas on the road" which won't drive demand for charging stations.

 

We could of course just wait for the rich folks who can afford it and don't care about the hassle (or can pay others to do it), but that always results in a slow adoption curve: the automobile was around for decades as a very expensive hobby slowly building demand for the infrastructure before Henry Ford was able to come along and mass produce them cheaply.

 

I have the feeling if we just let the market do it, we'll see the most catastrophic effects of peak oil before the electric car infrastructure is in place.

 

A self-balancing, 28-jointed adaptor-based biped; an electro-chemical reduction plant, integral with segregated stowages of special energy extracts in storage batteries, for subsequent actuation of thousands of hydraulic and pneumatic pumps, with motors attached; 62,000 miles of capillaries.... :phones:

Buffy

[Essay]

Buffy, I agree that electric is best oriented to the short-trip commuter.

For long trips I'd get out the luxery car (or just rent one) if needed, until enough swap stations were created (or better batteries came along).

 

As we’ve discussed in the chemistry and environmental studies treads 20779 and Is peak oil a fraud? from "Does it matter if global warming is a fraud?”, the Better Place venture-backed private company is planning initial small regional rollouts of battery charging and switching stations for electric cars, with the intention of causing a paradigm shift that will cause massive disruption to the auto and oil industry, leading ultimately to the elimination of the gasoline engine altogether.

 

I’d like to discuss the engineering details of Better Place’s and similar systems, focusing on whether they’ll be commercially successful, and how they might be improved. Anybody interested?

 

Mostly in response to Uncle Al & Moontanman....

 

http://hypography.com/forums/chemistry/20779-replacing-rare-earths-in-batteries.html#post278217

&

http://hypography.com/forums/chemistry/20779-replacing-rare-earths-in-batteries.html#post278221

 

 

Gosh, machinery (robotics) to help change the battery pack would be needed.

Solar panels could be used to keep "pending" batteries on our "contract" freshly charged.

People to operate the service points would be needed.

Larger or smaller battery packs could be swapped in, depending on one's plans.

"On-Star-like" services to tell us when our battery needed changing, and where the closest place was (and to alert the service station that we were coming in) would need development.

===

 

Oh no! We might have to create new support industries, and employ more people to handle this new way of saving the environment. Just think what that would do the the economy!

 

~ :phones:

[Eclipse Now]

Gosh, machinery (robotics) to help change the battery pack would be needed.

Your wish is my command! It's faster than filling up your gasoline car. This is in Tokyo now, as they're getting ready to run a taxi cab service via Better Place, and taxi's will never be able to just sit still and charge for 7 hours!

YouTube - Better Place Battery Swap Demonstration http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qd0WPw3p2MQ

 

 

"On-Star-like" services to tell us when our battery needed changing...

Absolutely! Microsoft is working with Better Place on GPS that is integrated to the V2G. In other words, your car doesn't just automatically tell you how far to the nearest charge points and / or battery swap station, it will help you plan out a complete trip. Going shopping? Charge here 3 hours. Going from Sydney to Melbourne? There's these 10 stations you could use... etc.

 

Oh no! We might have to create new support industries, and employ more people to handle this new way of saving the environment. Just think what that would do the the economy!

Exactly! And the bonus? America would stop bleeding $600 billion dollars a year buying imported oil. This is why, if I were America's benevolent dictator, I'd legislate that all new American cars had to be "Better Place" compatible and even give government incentives to Battery-Swap station owners.

 

The sooner that it is rolled out, the sooner America starts putting $600 billion a year back into their own economy! :rant:

 

Gosh, your oil dependency is possibly even worse than Australia's. I'd be seeing Better Place as a matter of national security! :phones:

 

(And no, I don't have any financial shares in BP, boy, I wish I did!)

 

~ :friday:

[X-Man]

I sure hope Better Place succeeds as I dont see anybody or anything else having a plan for the future.One other thing with basically all the gas stations in the US being a mini mart too, wouldnt it make sense for the gas station owners to try and get on board with having a charging/changing station installed at their station? I mean for the future that is,since eventually people whom didnt need gas any longer wouldnt have much need for the mini mart since they wouldnt be stopping for gas?? Just a thought.

[CraigD]

Gosh, machinery (robotics) to help change the battery pack would be needed.

Your wish is my command! It's faster than filling up your gasoline car. This is in Tokyo now, as they're getting ready to run a taxi cab service via Better Place, and taxi's will never be able to just sit still and charge for 7 hours!

Though delightfully cool, in Better Place’s robo-battery swap station lies my greatest (at at present, only) engineering objection to their overall approach, which is closely tied to my major business objection: the battery cannot be swapped without lifting the car (which the dedicated station shown in the videos accomplishes via a ramp/pit design).

 

This is detrimental to a couple of plausible use scenarios:

• Due most likely to driver error (eg: getting lost) depletes her battery on the road. Unlike a ordinary gas car, where it can be managed on foot with a 10 L gas can, there’s little to no practical way that even a service vehicle (tow truck) operator, let alone the dead vehicle driver with the help of a friend with an car, could accomplish a battery swap on the road.
  
• Including independent gas stations in the battery exchange network. According to BP’s website, a single bay battery swap station cost about US$500,00, and about the same real estate footprint as a drive-through car wash, with considerably more concrete and machinery. I believe this puts it beyond the practical means or sensible business interest of independent gas station and owners, even were BP or a similar venture wanted to permit such an expansion of their network (which, as I understand their business model, they certainly don’t).
  

BP appears to have, in all practical senses, a proprietary, closed-everything technical and business model. They’ve avoid standardizing to allow multiple manufactures to build the system. The company’s not publicly traded (you can’t buy shares of the company), being financed by a private venture capital partnership. Although I’m not a businessperson, this appears to me to be a company designed to return its investors’ investment, but not to grow.

 

My hope, then, somewhat counter-intuitively, is that BP will briefly succeed in their few intentionally small markets, inspiring multiple companies, including existing gasoline companies and multiple major automakers, to create a similar system based on standards that assure complete compatibility of their products, and promptly be wiped from the market by them. This, I believe, would be their greatest success – not success as a business, but success as a paradigm-shift driver.

 

On the engineering side – where my main objection to the BP system is its need for an expensive changing station, or at very least a car lift or drop pit – I was influenced by a battery exchange proposal I read about in the 1970s, during the height of the US gas crisis, when the popular press featured many electric car proposals. Unfortunately, despite hours of internet searching over several years, I’ve been unable to find online references to it. It involved a pack of lead acid battery cells roughly 2 x 0.6 x 0.4 m, attached to channel under the car, which could be removed or installed with small, man-pullable wheeled scissor jack, and the battery packs charged and stored to the side of any garage pay or large storeroom.

 

IMHO, a present-day, standardized swappable battery pack needs to retain this low-tech-changing ability, and be transportable along with its wheeled jack in the back of an ordinary trade or mini-van. A small station should be able to buy the minimal changing and charging kit for a few thousand dollars, about the cost of a single battery pack.

 

Another potential improvement would be if the car battery pack were segmented into 4 or more removable sub-packs, each suitable for use in a smaller vehicle, such as a 2 or 3-wheeled cycle. Without this flexibility, it seems to me that 2-wheelers would be excluded from the eventual battery exchange network. I’d hate for this to happen, because not only are bikes ideal for many single-person travel needs, they’re fun, and IMHO culturally important – an expression of freedom, and all that. :phones:

[Eclipse Now]

Another potential improvement would be if the car battery pack were segmented into 4 or more removable sub-packs, each suitable for use in a smaller vehicle, such as a 2 or 3-wheeled cycle. Without this flexibility, it seems to me that 2-wheelers would be excluded from the eventual battery exchange network. I’d hate for this to happen, because not only are bikes ideal for many single-person travel needs, they’re fun, and IMHO culturally important – an expression of freedom, and all that. :rolleyes:

 

This is a nice idea, but I'm not sure that the stranded car is a total barrier to this system being taken up, mainly because I think it is the ONLY system that has a chance to replace oil for domestic driving. Where's the hydrogen economy? Where's the infrastructure? Why would we waste so much energy on manufacturing hydrogen anyway when all we do is run it through a fuel cell to get electricity again? Biofuels can't be grown in remotely comparable quantities to oil within our lifetimes, etc....

 

It's electricity or nothing.

 

So the stranded car scenario with no charge? What's wrong with this?

 

It's not ideal, but it's not the end of civilisation either. :phones:

[Buffy]

What's wrong with this?

The labor involved and the greater assets required. The Auto Clubs in various places have started sending out mini pickups with standard supplies unless a tow truck (let alone a flat-bed hauler) is clearly required. They have a tank of gas, tire changing tools, and jumpers, that handle the majority of the calls, at the cost of a much cheaper vehicle.

 

I think Craig has it right, these smaller responders could just pop in one battery "pack" and get it to the next change-station.

 

But I agree, this isn't completely a show stopper.

 

Also, though, the proprietary, non-standards-based approach is not going to work. Yet another example where government standards-making in the absence of commercial cooperation (whether its top-down or simply procurement driven) is a really good thing....

 

All things are difficult before they are easy, :rolleyes:

Buffy

[Eclipse Now]

Standards? You want standards? :rolleyes:

 

Better Place | Promoting international standards

[Buffy]

Standards? You want standards? :cheer:

 

Oh brother...I have a bridge in Manhattan I can sell you! :rolleyes:

 

I used to write content free paragraphs like that about "active participation" my companies were involved in like X/Open, ODBC, CORBA, etc. etc. etc. We'd all show up at the standards groups endlessly putting up proposals mainly to confuse the market, with no intention of ever actually complying with or implementing them.

 

The plan was always to make *our* product the "de facto standard."

 

...and from the looks of that page, there aren't really any standards groups or committees meeting or doing any work...*anyone* can join ISO or the IEC, but that doesn't mean much if there aren't specific groups that are active with more than a handful of participants...

 

Scientists are the easiest to fool. They think in straight, predictable, directable, and therefore misdirectable, lines. The only world they know is the one where everything has a logical explanation and things are what they appear to be. Children and conjurors--they terrify me. Scientists are no problem; against them I feel quite confident, :phones:

Buffy

[Eclipse Now]

I'm no scientist, but even I'd like to buy that bridge if the offer is still going? :rolleyes:

[Eclipse Now]

Check this out...

 

Palo Alto, Calif.-based Better Place today announced in a press conference that it secured $350 million in a series B round led by HSBC Group that values the company at $1.25 billion.

 

Better Place $350M deal bested by Airtricity | Cleantech Group

[Zythryn]

I think the concept is wonderfully helpful, but I don't see it working financially.

For the swap stations to work, they really need a lot of traffic, which won't come until a lot of people need to swap batteries.

Now, you could certainly run the stations at a loss while you get EVs into the market. However, saturation (to the point of profit for the stations) will take time. And in that time, battery technology will be improved, increasing energy density. Which will increase range and thus cut down on the need for the swap stations.

This is for the general US.

In some markets, I think Better Place will be more workable due to earlier adoption of EVs and/or higher cost of gasoline.

[Eclipse Now]

Hmmm, yes, I think Better Place is the only model for today's batteries... but as you indicate, what about tomorrow?

 

Also from the above article:

 

The new investment comes days after Better Place's battery swapping business model was called into question by electric vehicle experts at the World Future Energy Summit (see 'Disaster' scenarios for electric cars), who weren't sure the company's approach would be necessary in the near term, given early electric vehicle trials and driver preferences.

 

Better Place's approach is also criticized by those who advocate fast charging networks over physical removal and replacement of batteries (see Nissan and ECOtality envision an even Better Place).

 

Although there's problems of electricity supply on the fast-charging idea. Surely if you had say 3% of drivers fast charging at once on a Friday afternoon, it would crash the grid? We're talking about a LOT of electrons.

 

Unless of course the fast-charge stations are off the grid, or even supplying the grid, because they have a Hyperion nuclear battery underground. Not sure of the economics of a Hyperion nuclear battery as they're still a few years away, but it is an interesting thought.

 

Imagine a 'petrol' station that doesn't need petrol tankers to pull in every few days and top it up. Imagine a charging station running on a Hyperion battery all on its lonesome out one a deserted highway somewhere.

 

The logistics of energy are radically re-shaped. Surely the military are looking at Hyperion nuclear batteries as mobile power stations! This is such a bizarre thought I started a new thread on it, wondering what other uses people might consider for a small mobile nuclear reactor!

[Eclipse Now]

Zythrin,

the marketplace for this will grow exponentially, especially as oil prices grow over the next few years. Shai Agassi says that we're currently wasting 3 trillion dollars a year on oil. Now soon oil will go up even higher. Eventually Better Place EV's price / km will go down, and so the world could save maybe 1.5 trillion dollars a year?

 

So here he is on the Economist, it is only 5 minutes, and well worth listening to. Makes the extraordinary claim on "The Economist" that if you sign up for a price / km for long enough years, you'll get the car at a discount, or even for free.

 

The Economist @ podcast.com