Shai Aggasi, founder and chief executive of Better Place, spent a couple of hours last night telling his story before a crowd of several hundred at the Boston Museum of Science. I was lucky enough to attend and left admiring his vision and the work Better Place is doing, but also feeling skeptical about Better Place’s approach to answering the electric car question.
Better Place is a venture-backed company that plans to eliminate obstacles to electric car adoption through the use of swappable batteries that extend the range of electric vehicles. It plans to own and operate a network of battery-charging spots and battery exchange stations that would give “subscribers” the feeling of infinite range; all, Better Place claims, for less than the cost of driving an internal combustion engine car.
I’ll say upfront that I’m a believer in the electrification of the automobile, so my skepticism of Better Place doesn’t come from any lack of faith in the electric car’s eventual prospects. Rather, Better Place gives me pause because I disagree with a premise that lies at the core of its approach.
Better Place’s strategy is founded on a premise that electric vehicles can’t succeed today because the technology available (namely, the electric range afforded by batteries) isn’t good enough. Consumers, Better Place would say, won’t buy a vehicle with a short range, especially when it takes hours to recharge.
I have two problems with this premise:
- It has a limited shelf-life that depends on technological stagnation. Millions, if not billions, of dollars worth of research is being conducted to improve battery capacity, safety, charging time and longevity. Better Place is betting against it. (Perhaps they should ask Iomega, Earthlink, Digital Equipment Corporation, or any other of a thousand dead or dying companies how similar bets worked out…)
- It ignores the tens of thousands of consumers for whom today’s electric vehicles are already “good enough.” Th!nk, GEM, ZENN and as many as two dozen other companies are building business that sell electric vehicles to consumers in circumstances for which today’s technology works, like retirement communities and urban / commuter environments. They are sewing the seeds of disruption, much like Sony did once upon a time with the first transistors (used them for portable radios that were, by most measures, pretty cruddy — unless you were a teenager who didn’t have any other option or you needed something small and portable).
So, while it is true that today’s technology — heavy batteries that provide limited range and take hours to charge — isn’t good enough for the mainstream, tomorrow’s technology might be. In fact, plenty of people are betting that it will be. And when it is, those medium-ranged, quick charging EVs made by a growing automotive manufacturer will make Better Place’s network of $500,000 battery swapping stations obsolete.
And that, I think, is a better way.
PS. During Q&A I asked Shai to give his assessment of the risks that improving technology might present to Better Place. I wasn’t too satisfied with his answer. His explanation that a “magic battery,” which goes 400 miles on a 3-minute charge, is not physically possible, is a long way off, and won’t work with the grid infrastructure anyway, seems like a straw-man argument that dodges the question. He didn’t acknowledge the middle ground between the “magic battery” and today’s technology, which is where I think the risk to Better Place lies.
But you can listen to his complete response to my question here.