Project Better Place To Expand to Australia
by Andrew Posner, Providence, Rhode Island 
on 10.24.08
Project Better Place--Great Idea or Hot Air?
We've heard a lot about Project Better Place, Shai Agassi's plan to make electric cars sell like cell phones. The simple premise behind the model is that batteries--the most expensive part of an electric car--should be leased to users for a monthly fee. For longer trips, electric "fueling" stations will enable drivers to pull in, swap their depleted battery for a fully charged one, and continue on their way. Of course, pulling this off would require a lot of charging station infrastructure, a lot of political buy-in, and a lot of electric cars. That's why we've also discussed some of the problems with the idea (see our reasons here).
Currently, Shai Agassi has "has commitments in Israel and Denmark and a partnership with Renault-Nissan to build electric cars with exchangeable batteries," a possible partnership with Portugal, and some serious cash to back him. Now, he is announcing that "Better Place [has] partnered with AGL Energy, the largest power company in Australia, and the Macquarie Capital Group to raise $670 million to help deploy an electric vehicle network powered by renewable energy."
Agassi expects the system to be deployed in 2012, and he is hoping that "the project would be able to leverage the Australian government’s $500 million Green Car Innovation Fund. The fund is intended to help jump-start the introduction of electric vehicles into Australia, which now has about 15 million cars."
Whether or not all this comes to fruition remains to be seen, but there is no shortage of impressive claims being made. For example, Agassi claims that "an intelligent electric grid would ultimately be able to power cars at the equivalent of 6-cent-a-gallon gasoline." Sounds good, but the question is whether it's too good to be true. . .
Via: Bits (NY Times Blog)
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There's one question about Project Better Place that I haven't figured out:
The cars in question would have a range of 100 miles or something, well in excess of most people's daily use. So under normal conditions, they'll be charging up at night, at home, using cheap electricity--a good thing. The charging/changing stations would be of use only in exceptional situations, like longer trips.
So my question is this: do they put a surcharge on the electricity you get from your own home?
It's tricky. I don't own a car, I live downtown and do my commuting and shopping using alternative transportation. I would love to have an efficient car for travel and occasisional use, but most days it would stay at home so it's not worthwhile at present. But I was thinking that if I had an electric car, I could justify it by, most days, charging it up by night, then selling the power back to the grid during peak times. Of course that would still be useless for travel, in the absence of something like Better Place. With BP, that might make my buying an electric car viable. But I'd have to take a look at how they're handling the charge-from-home situation. Can anyone comment on this?
Mr. Agassi is probably smarter than me, but I don't see the advantage to the consumer in leasing a battery separately versus including it in the cost. If you are financing your car, you are already making a monthly payment, if that happens to be for instance 300/month, and you additionally have to pay 150/month for the lease on your battery, from a consumer standpoint isn't that the same as just having a 450 car payment. The impact on your wallet/pocketbook is the same. The only difference is that you don't own the battery in the end.
Financing already exists in the automobile industry, you can even lease your car if you want. If the automakers want to lease batteries, they will be able to do it fairly easily.
I also don't think the sharing system is going to be cost competitive with owning your own battery. Every car is going to have a battery in it, whether parked at home, or at the supermarket - so it already costs as much as having everyone own a battery. Additionally, PBP needs to purchase enough extra batteries for the charging station to meet demands in the busiest part of the day. In the worst case, when everyone changes their batteries in the morning, at 8 am, you'd need twice as many batteries. Perhaps PBP will include home charging stations to counteract this, but then will there be enough demand at the charging stations to pay for their elaborate robotic swapping setup? If most people are driving under 40 miles a day, some people might go weeks without swapping a battery.