Better Place

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[quote="DaveinOlyWA, post: 839310"]2nd)   great you have a place to plug in at home or an employer who is willing to let you plug in as i do... dont make the assumption that everyone is as lucky. 
BP's option simply allows people living in apartments, condo's etc to plug in, or people like me who would like to use their garage for something else besides parking a car in there.

Not assuming anything. EVs do not have to work for everyone. MOST people will have some access to overnight charging. I do not park in my garage, but I have an outdoor outlet. I own apartments and if adding an EV outlet to the parking lot would give me a competitive advantage over ever other apartment building, I would do it.

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3rd) it would be beyond naive to assume that BP has not fully examined the ranges of batteries, the emerging customer base and ideal location of the swap stations. 

I believe BP will make it if they can be profitable with the charging stations. I hope they locate where I can use them, I am assuming I can use their charging station without being a "subscriber", because I will not need their overnight charging or their battery swapping.

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why is it that everyone assumes that the 2nd or 3rd generation EV will be no better than the first??. why is it, that this must fit 100% of our needs?? we have required this from no other industry. 

I believe future EVs will have both better range and faster recharging,
which is precisely why I would not invest in a swapping station business plan. By the time BP has installed all the swapping stations that will be necessary, they will not be necessary!

 

That's a pretty big assumption. There's a limited amount of investment money available, and always lots of competing businesses trying to attract it. This present depression is characterized by an unwillingness of investors to take chances, and start-up companies are the riskiest. One unfavorable bit of news could dry up investment. If Eestor were to be successful (and I'm skeptical right now, but it's a possibility) the bottom would fall out of the whole battery-swapping concept.

 

While the economics woes do put a damper on investment, the smart money knows which way the wind is blowing.

And if EEstor is successful I will be overjoyed. Instead of battery swap, we'd just have lighter and easier ultracap swaps in the BP system. Fast charging of EEstor's device is as impractical as is fast charging batteries. Here's an article that goes into detail on this subject:

Low-tech Magazine: Who killed the electric grid? Fast-charging electric cars

Note at the end they say that battery swaps are the answer but there are two problems (see article). Neither of them really are problems. The BP swap plan is to pull the battery from below the car by an automatic robot arm. The 2nd problem "All batteries will have to be the same" is bogus as well. BP doesn't require all batteries to be identical.

Shai Agassi refutes that idea in this interview, which is fantastic BTW.

Check it out:

Shai Agassi’s 2020 vision | WBUR and NPR - On Point with Tom Ashbrook

 

Anybody who really thinks he knows which company will be successful and which will fail, in a new industry with lots of competition is either a fool, or a billionaire.

That statement is just plain silly!!!!!!! If ultra-caps become a reality, you can slow-charge a bank of them at the service station, and when the car pulls in, you fast-dump into the car.

You keep saying the grid cannot "support" fast-charging. But whether you fast-charge or swap batteries, the grid must supply the same amount of energy. Slow charging allows you to accumulate energy at off-peak times, but with ultra-caps you could do that and then dump to the cars.

Also, the whole "you can't fast charge" argument assumes the grid will not be upgraded gradually as EVs gradually move into the fleet.

From the article you cite:

They assume that every car in the U.S. is replaced by an EV in one day, with no change to the grid, and they then assume they are all plugged in for a 10-minute fast charge simultaneously. They are creating a straw man that they can easily knock down.

Consider a more likely scenario:

EVs come into the fleet gradually, and the grid is upgraded at the same time, also gradually, with the addition of distributed, renewable sources, such as wind and PV. Since most people do most of their driving in short in-town trips, the vast majority of charging is slow charging at off-peak times. The only fast charging done is for extended road trips, but people will have gotten out of the habit of those because they are too short-sighted to switch to electric, and they cannot afford the gas any more.

Fast charging will be possible in the small amounts needed with the upgraded electric grid and renewables gradually coming on line.

Battery swapping with slow charging overnight will require every swap station to have in inventory as many batteries (of the appropriate sizes and types) as the total number of customers it's going to have for the entire day on the busiest day of the year. Otherwise, you pull into a swap station in the middle afternoon and they don't have a battery for you, and you've got no juice to make it to the next station.

And charging all those batteries at the same time will require the same size electrical service as charging two or three of them in ten minutes each. So the electrical service to the station still has to be humongous. All you've gained is moving the demand to off-peak hours.

FWIW, my Porsche will have a 28 kWh battery pack, and the battery importer says it should get between 138 and 159 miles. I do not know how he arrived at those numbers. When I ordered the car I asked for 125 miles of range so that I can drive 100 miles (which I'll probably never do) and still have 20% SoC. (LiFePO4 can go lower than NiMH without degradation.)

 

Any investor who doesn't think that oil is in decline and EVs are the future is not paying attention..

It might be possible to fast dump from one capacitor to another. I used to think so, but now I doubt it, because you still need intermediate components of sufficient "durability" to safely transfer that much power.

Trickle charging the EESU overnight solves one problem, but not the other - the ability of the connections between the two ultracaps to to not melt!

Sure connection components could be made to handle that much power, but it might be very costly to have them in each vehicle.

155,000 Watts from one cap to another might need "wires" a foot thick.... or so I'm told.

Swapping EESUs could be much cheaper and even faster than fast charging.

But until I'm living in the Bahamas, off the excesses of my Zenn stock speculation, we don't really need to debate this too much.

 

We are agreed about that. But which company to invest in? Any investor who is paying attention understands that in an emerging technology most companies (and their stockholders) will go bust.

When home computers first became technologically possible there were dozens of companies making incompatible computers. Chance picked the successful ones. The guy who wrote Lotus-123 (the first program to actually do something useful on a small home computer) just happened to write it on an Apple. That's the only reason Apple survived the sort-out. IBM (already an established giant in mainframe computers and other office machines) decided to make a PC, and because Bill Gates convinced them to contract him to provide the OS, and because he could not deliver on time, Microsoft became a giant and most people are stuck with a crap OS.

Better Place may win, or it may lose. People may like the idea of leasing a battery and obliging themselves to buy their electricity from one company, or they may rebel at the idea and prefer to own their own battery and preserve their power-buying options.

Because investors understand this kind of dynamic, investment capital may continue to flow in, or it may dry up. One scary news item could burst the investment bubble.

Phoenix already has a fast-charging EV. The components to handle the power would be no different for the SUT's LiFePO4 battery than for an ultra-cap. Thus the components exist. I believe Tesla plans for its model-S to be capable of fast charging. Again, capacitors are much easier to fast-charge than are batteries, and the components would be the same. Maybe you'd need a wire a foot in diameter to dump 50 kWh into a pack in 5 seconds, but not if you're willing to do it in 10 minutes. And when the price of gas goes through the roof, people will be willing to wait ten minutes.

Obviously, you won't just connect the two capacitors straight, to dump from one to another. You'll have a retarding charger that limits the power flow.

Good luck on the Zenn speculation. Zenn is a good company and with or without Eestor they could be one of the players in a future EV world. I wouldn't recommend Nassau as a place to move to, however. Bimini is very nice. And small enough that even a stock Xebra or GEM would be all the car you'd need. (Though perversely, there are a lot of pickup trucks and SUVs there. On an island that you can walk the entire length of in a couple of hours!)

 

I'm hoping that ETFs like this one are generally good bets (long term) PBW - PowerShares WilderHill Clean Energy(ETF) - Google Finance

A BP customer wouldn't be obligated to only using BP charging spots according to Agassi. Roaming would be allowed.

ZNN is pretty much out of the EV selling business believe it or not. All their REAL asperations depend on licensing the cityzenn drivetrain to the auto manufacturers. If no EESU is delivered this year, ZNN is toast.

 

I think we were talking about Better Place's prospects for raising a massive amount of capital over the long term, not where to invest our pension funds. My point was that with so many companies competing in any new field, the big investors have many choices, and may not risk any of them, since they cannot know which will be successful.

I guarantee you one thing: If BP gives you a battery to use at no cost, they're going to make it up in charging fees. The customer will pay the cost of that battery plus the dozen others sitting in various swap stations just in case you pass that way, one way or another. You're going to have contract fees to pay, and "roaming" off their system will be extremely expensive. Shai Agassi is not going to give you a free battery and then say, "Go ahead, just charge it at home, that's fine." He'd get no investment capital at all with a business plan like that.

That's too bad, because the Zenn is a very nice little car. Allan's Zenn is much nicer than my Xebra, except with regard to range (I've got more and better battieries) and I would envy him if I didn't still hold out hope of getting my electric Porsche some day.

 

I love how you can "guarantee" the future and specifically the details of BP's service - which you are clearly guessing (wrongly) about. You really think BP won't allow charging at home? That's nuts. For most BP customers that's where 80+% of the charging will be done. You will be able to charge pretty much anywhere. What you'll pay for is a rate for miles driven. Whatever the rate is, you'll have more convenience at a cheaper price than from a similar-sized gas car. That's the BP promise.

 

Ah, so you can charge at home but you'll pay (double, triple, quadruple?) for the batteries through a fee per mile.

The way leasing a car today is more economical than buying one? Better look at that logic again: It's only economical to lease if you get a tax write-off on the lease that you would not get on a purchase, or maybe if you intend to buy a new car often and don't want the hassle of selling.

So, poorly cared-for batteries don't last as long. Agreed. Have you ever heard of anyone who cares for rented equipment as well as for equipment they own? Okay, the occasional saintly soul. Not the majority. So BP is going to lease us batteries so that we can abuse them without having to pay for replacement???

Nope. BP is going to charge us the full real cost of batteries, including their replacement, plus profit, because those investors are not philanthropists: they demand a return on their investment. And it's not just one battery pack per car. They also have to stock a sufficient number of batteries at all the swap stations. And in the end, the customers have to pay for that, through the fees they pay BP.

The only way this can work for BP is either to invent a fool-proof battery pack (which if it existed we would not need to lease our batteries in the first place) or to charge its customers enough to replace those batteries as often as abusive customers ruin them by treating them the way a first-time Zenn (or Xebra) owner treats his/her batteries.

Economies of scale: These get passed along to the consumer only when there is sufficient competition that the company cannot keep the extra profit for itself.

 

No you won't. Why do you constantly criticize things when you don't know all the facts. Customers aren't leasing anything from BP. You pay for the car but you don't own or lease the battery. You pay (probably) around 8 cents a mile (which will drop as the business grows and the costs/customer drop). That's it. Cheap and convenient - better than the status quo.

Specifically, no range anxiety and no reasons for people to not become EV users - no exorbinant upfront costs on the car, or worries about getting stuck with last year's inferior battery tech.

The market for EVs could grow multiple times faster with companies like better place facilitating the switch. Other companies, using the same model, will follow - BP encourages this. All the services will allow roaming at the same cost, adding to the convenience.

Other benefits: If you subscribe for enough miles, you get a discount on the hardware (the car). If you need to battery swap more than 50 times a year BP will pay you for the inconvenience. That's how many charging spots they will have.

The whole system is networked - if the grid needs power, the charging of your car will be delayed/managed so it doesn't add to peak demand, while still making sure you'll have enough juice to get where you want to go next.

You'll be able to locate and reserve available parking spots in urban settings all through the cars network interface.

If you change you routine (run a special errand), you tell the car where you want to go and the car advises you on your options: whether you can make it as is, or if you need to swap/charge and where you can do it.

BP will buy power and batteries in bulk and give us a better deal than we could get individually. They'll only buy renewable energy too. Plus the batteries as they age can be deployed in areas where range requirements aren't as big, like Israel and Hawaii, extending their useful lives.

Eat crow already and admit BP is necessary and very cool for all concerned.

 

You criticize me for not knowing what I'm talking about. But you are talking about a promise as though it were an established system. Remember the Volt? Promises, promises, promises... and now it looks like they'll scrap it because they're bankrupt (in effect, if not yet legally).

Then there's the Zap X and the Zap Alias and the Zenn City Car which depends on a still theoretical capacitor concept. And the hundreds of promised EVs that have been two years away for the last decade. My favorite is the Obvio, because it looks like a car Roger Rabbit would drive. And the whole BP concept depends on an EV from a car company that does not yet have an EV for sale.

You are telling us BP will do this and have that and charge X. So far, they have nothing and the cars don't exist and what the contract will look like is all promises and speculation.

There's so much hype and smoke in the EV arena that I don't believe anything until I can go to a dealer and test-drive it and buy it. Zenn and Zap and Tesla and GEM are actually selling cars, and I'd bet even money Aptera will get there. I'm not sure if Phoenix is actually selling the SUT yet. And AC Propulsion will convert a Scion. Maybe there's another NEV company I've missed. The rest of it, including BP, is all just promises.

We're arguing about which of two models is more practical, but neither exists yet, and what either will look like is all just speculation. You think BP's model will work and fast charging won't. I think the reverse. But neither of us knows what will really work, or which if either the market will accept, or what the structure or cost of either will be like, or how BP's contract will read or what they will or will not offer.

Bottom line, we both want EVs to succeed, and we'd both be happy with either system if it actually existed. You believe Shai Agassi's promises. I don't. But it really doesn't matter what either of us believes.

 

Cleantech Investing in Israel: Deutsche Bank: Project Better Place has "the potential to eliminate the gasoline engine"

an oldie but a goodie.

 

Promises, promises.

I've been to Bimini Island three times. Bimini is actually two tiny islands surrounding a protected lagoon and connected by a water taxi: a little putt-putt boat, capacity a dozen or so. The Islands are tiny. A golf cart is all the car you really need. Yet people have pickup trucks and SUVs and full-size cars. It makes no sense at all.

Put people on an island so small they could spit from one end to the other, and they'll want a car. The only thing that's going to make gas engine's obsolete is when gas gets too expensive for them to pay for.

Bimini is proof that the availability of practical, cheap EVs is not by itself sufficient to get people to switch.

 

Nice video. It is a pretty concise collections of the business plan. IF, IF, IF, when we, when we, when we. Let me know when Better Place has actually done something.

I find it interesting that in another thread you are claiming that EV's will be the majority of vehicles sold by 2020 because consumers will be able to drive them for $0.02 per mile. Here you are claiming that everyone will prefer to use Better Place's service because they will be able to buy miles for only $0.08 per mile. Why would anyone choose to pay 4 times the cost per mile to use BP's batteries and network?

Battery swapping just doesn't make financial sense and requires all manufacturers to use a standard battery format. That simply won't happen.

Today manufactures could save huge amounts of money if they chose a standard engine or a serious of standard engines for different size cars. They don't because an engine is a major part of the car and a chance for the manufacturer to differentiate themselves from the competition. When electric motors and batteries replace engines manufacturers will still need to differentiate themselves. Instead of bragging about their 300 hp engine they will be bragging about how their batteries will discharge at a faster rate so you get more power. How long they last, how quick they charge, how small and light they are; these will all be features used to sell cars. Manufacturers don't want a standard battery.

Look at consumer electronics. Cell phones don't have standard batteries nor do computers. They can't even standardize the power cord!

 

My reaction as well. The cars don't exist yet. The "standard" batteries don't exist yet. There is not yet one battery-swap station. And BP has not yet offered an actual contract, committing themselves to a price and a clear statement of what the terms will be.

Yet some folks are sure it will look like this and function like that and cost thus-and-such.

 

Clearly you're not paying attention. For 8 cents a mile you don't have to pay upfront an extra $10,000+ for the EV car with battery - a battery that you alone are stuck with. Plus the extra 6 cents means you don't have to charge only at home or, if you're lucky, at work- - you can charge anywhere- plus you get that nifty network support. And you can go farther than the range of the battery in a single day with 2 minute battery swaps.

Eventually BP plans to reduce the charge per mile to 2 cents as they grow. I thought it was in the TED conference Video below where I heard Agassi say that but now I'm not sure. In any event, this is a good presentation: