Electric car startup Better Place liquidating after $850 million investment

Thanks for posting. I posted about it at Better Place anyone? | Page 2 | PriusChat but didn't get around to starting a new thread here.

For those who aren't aware, these guys were doing (hugely) expensive battery swapping stations. AFAIK, you bought the vehicle and leased the battery.

Unfortunately, this can cause a new problem that I hadn't realized. From Better Place CEO: A missed opportunity - Globes (re: the bankruptcy).

 

Getting people to change behaviors (drive and EV instead of a gas only car) is difficult enough. Getting them to change multiple aspects of their life is much more difficult. The real problem is that you want people to not own the most expensive part of their car...the battery. It is a reasonable idea, but maybe 1-2 decades too soon. Baby steps are needed.
Another issue is that every time you swap a battery there is a middleman involved...who needs to be paid. When I charge at home it costs nothing but the electricity that I actually use.

Mike

 

^^^
To me, the problem was that building and staffing their swapping stations (besides the other operating costs involved with that) is HUGELY expensive and they couldn't get enough customers. If you look at the videos at Better Place anyone? | PriusChat, you can see that what they're doing looks pretty darned expensive compared to installing charging stations...

I hope people don't just look at the headline as "evidence" of EV failure. It's a business failure of the battery swapping concept.

 

Failure of that concept for this time. In a couple decades when EV's and PHEV's are so common that the weird niche purchases are gas only vehicles, something like this makes more sense.

I still like MIT's "liquid battery goo" they made a year or two ago. The energy storage is in this gooey slime that can be pumped out of your car when empty into a "goo station" and recharged with the rest of the goo while fully charged goo is pumped in to replace it. I think that is a concept for now. Easy for people to wrap their heads around refueling. Just now it is battery goo instead of liquid petrol.

 

Hmm... if they become THAT common (seems like it's going to take a LONG time), I'd imagine that battery technology (in terms of capacity for a given volume and weight), price, and charging technology will have improved to a point that the swapping will seem unnecessary.

I think the biggest problem w/Better Place's concepts are the huge capital investment needed and continual costs. Then, you have the issue of battery pack standardization. Most automakers wouldn't want have to standardize on that in terms of form factor, chemistry, shape, capacity, etc. They want to differentiate their product from their competitor. And, older batteries will get outdated. They don't want to be stuck supporting older batteries in newer cars.

It might only work w/fleets of identical vehicles, which is what Better Place was doing... AFAIK, they only had 1 car model.

 

I hand it to Israel Corp (one of the key partners) being willing to support this and other green ventures I am aware of. Sounds like this venture wired up Hawaii well for EV charging stations. I wonder what HI is thinking (solar PV?) as far as EV strategy...one would think fossil fuel elec is just as scarce as oil there.

 

It was a bad idea. Instead of figuring out what people would pay for, it depended on constraining people to pay for it. That only works by constraining the competition. Just think how silly this will be seen 10 years from now.

Meanwhile, Tesla's business plan is entirely centered on providing what people want to pay for.....and they realize that will require continuous improvements in range while price must go down as the business develops.

 

So, instead of taking on 128 lbs and a couple cubic feet of gas, need complex robotic sorter and charging complex to dole out 400+ lbs of battery for another 80 or 100 miles or so. Don't see this anytime soon.

 

Another basic problem is that for every car sold there needs to be more than one battery built, paid for and put into the system...when there are just a few EVs maybe 1.5...when there are many EVs maybe 1.1 (just made up numbers, but there has to be enough to make the system work.)

Mike

 

That is an excellent point. When the car owners have to pay for it all, that would have been painful.

 

A big part of the problem comes from fully integrated batteries instead of modular units. We know how to make back-plane computers and routers:


This is Cisco 6509, a big-iron router (in its day) with 5 lb blades. How hard can it be to make our battery packs consist of modules that plug-in to a back-plane? Better still, an industry standard for the battery modules.

Now I look at it from a maintenance standpoint, the 38 module, 19 pairs, that are slowly aging and need replacement and/or refurbishment. But this is not rocket science and even the useless over-pressure vent can be modular without going nuts.

Now I'm not so fond of trying to swap modules to provide extra range but IF we are going to head that way, smaller, man-portable modules are the way to go. Take a page from computer and communications and make a standard back-plane with an open-source, modular interface.

I will now step down from my rabble rousing foot-stool:
Bob Wilson

 

Those are just 'cells' or modules still depending upon an external, battery management system:

Not what I'm expecting are modules that incorporate the battery management system which should have:

• battery cell carrier - any battery chemistry could be used that fits
• hot-swap - allows modules to plug-in or out as needed, the battery chassis management handles module mgt.
• charge-discharge in module - so the battery management is within the module to keep the cells safe
• shunt capability - the ability to isolate the battery cell(s) from the power bus and continue continuity, 1 ms. tri-state isolate
• thermal path - the ability to accept or release heat to a cooling air or liquid
• ~10 lbs (22 kg) weight - normal humans can insert or remove

The traction battery pack then looks like the chassis of a router or switch with 'blades' that carry the modules. The blade logic handles managing the cells and communications with the chassis or traction battery pack.

In theory, the new traction battery could carry N+1 blade/modules. Each time the car starts, it rotates the last spare in so all receive 'equal' usage and aging. Then when one reaches the 'losing capacity state', a 'call for maintenance' is issued and that module is either worked to exhaustion or skips rotation until replaced.

The trick to making this work is three power buss that can be switched by each blade or module: GND, A and B. Only A or B is connected to the vehicle DC power buss at one time. However, individual modules may or may not switch from A or B depending upon their operational state.

Initially, the switches might happen only upon 'start' but it is entirely possible that the power switches could happen in 0.1 to 0.01 msec. which means a capacitor could easily handle the transition.

The traction battery wiring appears complex but because of the advanced module management, no single module fails the pack. It literally has N+1 redundancy.

I suppose you want a working prototype with draft patent papers now.

Bob Wilson

 

It comes from looking at what has happened over time from the NHW10 through current Prius traction batteries. I'm thinking it makes more sense to make a battery module that is individually, field replacable with a vehicle specific, traction back-plane:

• 288V - NHW10
• 272V, 38 modules - NHW11
• 202V, 28 modules - NHW20
• 202V, 28 modules - ZVW30
• 144V, 20 modules - Prius c

A back-plane architecture starting with the NHW11 would have made upgrades and repairs much, much easier. Battery replacement costs would be pegged at the lowest cost, field replaceable unit, the module. So instead of the FUD about $4,000-6,000 we still see tossed about we would be seeing $400 or less. But then I have an owner's point of view, interested in minimizing my operational costs. <grins>

Bob Wilson

 

I think that this is very much wishful thinking. The attributes that make a good battery for a mobile application aren't really the same as the good attributes for things like grid use. I could be wrong...but size and weight per kwh are very important for cars, but not nearly as much for say a wind farm, since they have acres of land to use. If you could even get 10-20% of the EV battery money back I would be amazed. First, (for example) a wind farm would be buying in bulk, not little 4 - 20 kwh crash tested boxes, but in MWh size quantities.

Mike