Has Israel Just Figured Out How to Make the Electric Car Worthwhile?
Energy independence has been talked about so much for decades that many doubt it’ll happen in our lifetimes. But the world may soon see a dramatic change over the next few years — and that change is coming from Israel.
During my recent 10-day trip there, thanks to the Once in a Lifetime project by 24 Hebrew University students, I went to a facility run by Better Place — a company that seems to have worked all the kinks out of making electric cars free of gasoline a reality. The cars look like any other car, and drive smoothly and silently (you can see video of me test-driving one here). Once charged, either at your home or at a station, the car can drive 100 miles without needing another charge.
The new twist? Rather than wait for a recharge, you can go to a battery switching station that will install a new battery in less than two minutes. They charge up your old battery for another customer.
This recycling of the battery will significantly drop the price of the vehicle down to $20,000 or less, the company claims. Better Place is confident that they can make the electric car very affordable. Customers obviously won’t have to pay for gasoline, and maintenance will be cheaper. Plus, the vehicles employ a braking regeneration technology that will prolong the life of brakes.
The Israeli government has reduced the tax rate on electric cars down to ten percent — from 79 percent — to help get them on the road.
The system is ready. The staff answered every skeptical question posed to them by the audience, and they even had a pricing plan prepared. Customers will pay a monthly subscription to use the infrastructure based on how many miles they drive.
And this is coming very soon.
As you read this, Better Place is working to set up five to ten battery switching stations and thousands of charging stations around Israel for a test run this month. CEO Shai Agassi says that six months later, the cars will begin being sold, and they believe 100 switching stations will be set up and 1,000 electric cars will be added to the road per month. At least 92 Israeli companies have already agreed to convert some of their cars, and 17 local councils and municipalities have given the thumbs up to setting up charging stations. There are already 1,000 charging stations in Israel (and 100 in Copenhagen). Deals have been struck to build the switching stations in Australia, Canada, Japan, and Hawaii.
The significance of this cannot be overstated. According to War Footing, a book by Frank Gaffney and a team of national security experts, half of the cars in the U.S. are driven 20 miles per day or less. A “plug-in with a twenty-mile range battery would reduce gasoline consumption by, on average, 85 percent,” they write. But we’re not talking about a twenty-mile range. We’re talking about a range of about 100 miles with the ability to switch batteries if you need to drive longer.
Such a simple solution.
Duh, They don’t need to built new stations. Already existing gasoline stations can perform the battery changing.
If you’re going to charge them on site, you’ll need a substation and some very expensive charging equipment. Practically speaking they will be new stations, even if they’re in the locations of existing gas stations.
All fueling stations in each town could send their batteries to *one* charging station in the town and then be redistributed. In addition, Jiffy Lube, and quick change oil shops would be perfect. They already have the hole in the ground. This would give them an additional product to sell.
My weekly average is probably not much over 20 miles. That’s because I use the city bus services for short trips. But I am still glad of the 600+ mile range of my Peugeot diesel car for long hauls, which is what I mostly use it for. The only advantage I can see for electric vehicles is for local deliveries. Private electric cars will just clog up the streets, the only advantage being they don’t pollute when they’re standing in traffic jams. They will also knock over more pedestrians due to their quietness.
What John in a particular part of France says is probably most valid for his part of France. Pedestrians about to be knocked over can be alerted by playing a few bars of Berlioz’s clarion brass aimed at the bicyclists/pedestrians absorbed by le Figaro. Maybe that Dance of the Adolescents? Lots of choices in Berlioz.
Remember also that our Islamist/Muslim enemies who are also our suppliers of oil are more addicted to American cash than they care to admit. Ultimately we have the upper hand in that two way street. Decomposing and liquefying dinosaurs aren’t dying off like they used to…..
Bravo! Israeli! Acumen! Charge! Ahead!
John, you can just recharge at the charging stations or go to a battery switch station. As long as those facilities are available, distance doesn’t matter.
John, as long as there are charging stations or battery switching stations, the distance doesn’t make a difference.
I’m not so sure, Ryan. Lots of cars can go for 400 to 600 miles on a tank of gas. But if an electric vehicle can only go 100 miles on a fill charge, that means recharging or swapping batteries much more often than with a conventional vehicle. Some people will enjoy an excuse to stretch their legs frequently like that on a long trip, but I have a feeling that more people are lazy enough that they will be very annoyed at having to make a pit stop every 100 miles. You will need some compensating benefit to win those people over, for example being significantly cheaper to “refuel” e.g. half or a third the cost per mile compared to conventional gasoline power.
Compensation will be cost for refuel = 5% of same cost for oil in switch station + no bad smell. Home refuel will be 1% of same cost for oil. That said, financial data and rational has never made people change their habit.
I’ve experienced urbanlike traffic conditions with the presence of many, many electric vehicles – including Teslas – and they aren’t completely silent, just different. Unless folks are hard of hearing most old codgers like me can adapt.
For a while I sold forklifts for a living. Electric forklifts have been around as long as forklift technology itself. I saw in some plants forklifts working twentyfour hours a day. They simply exchanged batteries on the machines. The technology has been around for over seventy years. Are we really so dumb as having overlooked it for so long?
yes,like wheels on suitcases!
The whole problem with electric vehicles is batteries. I know I am a moron but maybe there could be some kind of pantograph style partial charging apparatus (remember trolley buses )that allows a vehicle to recharge while driving for short periods. They would only have to be on certain main roads etc.
My microlight aircraft can fly at 50 knots for an hour on 2 litres of petrol(if I use lift etc). Surely lightweight cars can be designed that can take one or two passengers for 100 miles on a gallon. Light and cheap is the answer. Batteries are an environmental disaster anyway and the metals all seem to come from China.
The metal ores come from Canada but go through China for processing.
Even the Smart FourTwo only gets 40 MPG on it’s 3 cylinder go-kart engine. It’s been tried.
And my 1989 Honda Prelude (like the first car I owned, a 1970 Audi 100) gets 30 mpg on the road. And those are/were real cars with real engines – not like the Smart or other “toy” cars.
The problem with ultra-light materials is that they aren’t cheap, and have a distinct tendency to squish on impact.
Another issue with the ultra-lights is, how does one make an ultra-light minivan? Most families have kids, and generally more than one. I know my parents had kids. That’s pretty self evident, but sometimes it needs to be stated. A Smart for 2 car works when you are a double-income-no-kids family, but after one or two, and you’re trying to figure out how to fit your junior linebacker into the back seat, it doesn’t work any more. It also won’t handle a sofa.
Until the electric car can handle five adults, and the cargo that the typical family has to deal with, I can’t see it being anything more than a 3rd car.
I’m also skeptical about the range issue. The daily average may be 20 miles a day, but what does the tail look like? When I was going to college up in Dallas, I only drove to the store, and things off campus, and back to Houston to visit folks. Everything except the Houston drive was only a few miles. Driving from Dallas to Houston was about 300 miles. Sure, if there was a power station every hundred miles exactly, it would be only three charge ups for the trip. More likely it would have been four chargings, since I don’t like to go below 25% fuel left.
Give it 15 minutes or so to find a town, get off the freeway, find a station, charge up, then get back on, and your talking another hour added to what was already a 4-5 hour drive. What is trivial most of the time becomes a major inconvenience at a time when you last need it.
It’s a definite step forward, but I don’t see it doing much until battery technology has dramatically improved.
It will never happen. The technology is infected with Israeli Joo-cooties so no one will want to touch it (sarc.)
I heard the Palestinians already developed something similar. Turn the key and the battery blows up.
Not a bad idea for a tiny,eeny, weeny country with a itty bitty population. For an equivalence, have them drive from Tel Aviv to Tehran. Then ship the car to Canada and drive from Vancouver to the Atlantic Coast. And, just imagine the lines.As the waiting queue increases it will block the exit queues so you’ll achieve the Green Dream – the death of the car as you all start walking to work.
A 2 minute battery change will be less time consuming than filling up with gas, so as lont as the station has a large enough supply, they should have no problems with queues in places where traditional gas stations have no problems now.
The main problem for the US of course is the distances involved, which would require a vehicle with longer range. But for most of the civilised world (and for most traffic in the US, most people rarely leave their home town) it’s enough.
100 miles is only a quarter what I get from my current car, but if I can charge it at home and maybe at the office (shouldn’t be too hard to design a plugin charging system that’s theft proof) I should rarely have to visit their charging stations at all.
And no, charging of course won’t be free. You may not be paying for gas, you’ll be paying for electricity.
Which means it won’t be long before governments start taxing electricity as they do gasoline now, at 70 cents to the Euro.
I think some commenters are losing sight of an important point. EV’s are not designed to replace all motor vehicles, just some of them – mainly those being used for short commutes, etc. Negative comments implying many cars or light trucks wouldn’t fit in with this plan miss the point. If the number that will fit is significant, this idea could be worthwhile. If it isn’t, it won’t.
Israel has always been interested in electric cars. Considering that Israel has no oil and the oil producing countries surrounding Israel have talked about pushing Israelis into the sea it’s pretty obvious why.
There is a serious problem with battery exchange that the article didn’t address. Not all batteries are equal. As lithium ion batteries age they lose their capacity. My iPod was good for about 14 hours of music per charge when I first got it. Now, three years later, my iPod’s battery is down to eight hours of music per charge and it’s still dropping.
Would an electric car owner exchange a brand new battery for one that might be two years old and have far less capacity? I don’t think so.
As to battery compatibility, I think thast’s inevitable. When personal computers were first introduced there was no compatibility. My Kaypro (yes, I’m so old I once owned a Kaypro) was not compatible with Osbornes, Tandys or Timex Sinclars. You might notice that none of those computers exist any more. I own a PC and my PC can work with any software from any other PC (I don’t know about MACs). At first every car manufacturer will have their own battery system, but eventually all will be compatible if car companies don’t want to end up like Kaypro.
I also wonder about the logistics of battery changing. An electric car doesn’t usually have a single battery, it has a battery pack. The battery pack of a Tesla Roadster weighs several hundred pounds. This is nothing like changing the small lead acid battery of an internal combustion car, this would be a big operation. Would it be quick? Possibly, but it’s not going to be as simple as it sounds.
Israel is a small country and the limited range of electric vehicles is not going to be as big a problem as it would be in the USA. I am 100% in favour of electric vehicles, but I don’t think battery exchange is the magic bullet that will make America give up gas guzzlers. Working on better batteries and faster recharging is the way to go here.
In the meantime, I can’t wait to see the Nissan LEAF.
A battery swap should be relatively easy to perform as long as it is somewhat automated. Access to the battery compartment would necessarily be easy – leaving what could be a cosmetically unappealing hatch of some sort visible for all to see. Big deal!
As for older packs being swapped in for exchange – it works both ways. Someone who has never used the battery swap could drive down to the local swap station with a battery pack that is less than good and swap it for a better performing one. I would guess that this could be prevented by an on-board chip that monitors all the cells in the pack – a quick scan would reveal poorly performing cells that would require replacement. Having this information readily available at the time of swapping would ensure a more or less equal swap. Got a bad cell or two? That cell could be easily removed and replaced in a matter of minutes – and the last owner pays the bill for it. Easy!
I think this is the idea (why didn’t I think of that!!!) that could make the all electric car work even in this country. How many extra battery packs would we need? Maybe 1 for every 10 cars? 1 for 20? Depends on how fast packs can be recharged. And you don’t need a ‘one size fits all’ – larger cars/suvs/vans can simply be built with a double or triple pack bay.
Finally! A true ’4 wheel drive’ car for the masses! One motor for each wheel – for extraordinary traction control for takeoff and (regenerative) braking in ice and snow.
Anyone have some idea of what these cars would cost?
The batteries are owned by the company, not by the vehicle owners, so you do not lose anything by swapping. You pay the company per mile driven and they cover the cost of the “fuel” (battery charge).
Think of it this way: You buy an electric car (from, say, Nissan), and you buy “fuel” (use of battery) from Better Place. Just as you buy your regular car from Honda (say) and your gasoline from your local gas station.
Better Place already cut a deal with a chain of gas stations in Israel to install battery swapping stations in their gas stations. So battery swap locations are no harder to find than gas stations.
Northern Lights
The idea of Israel without petroleum might soon be “inoperative” at least as far as Natural Gas goes. At current technology, Nat Gas fueled vehicles have about 1/3 the range of gasoline fueled equivalent vehicles. Ergo, 100+ miles range at current technology. Not Bad. -S-
Even with this, the following two problems with electric vehicles remain.
1st — all that this does is shift the source of the pollution from the car’s tailpipe to the generating plant. In many areas electric cars are therefore in effect COAL BURNING vehicles. Because coal fired plants are generating that electricity.
2nd — looking at pollution just at a single point is not the real picture. An electric car looks clean but — how much earth is strip mined for the lithium for the batteries (and the coal for the power plants)? How much energy is consumed in the entire manufacturing process of those batteries — and how much pollution is generated during that manufacturing process?
Electric cars may LOOK good — but in fact if you look at the whole system end to end they are far far worse than either diesel or gas powered vehicles.
Now if you want to talk about using natural gas for long haul vehicles (18 wheelers, high usage delivery vehicles like UPS and FedEx) then you are going to be taking a big step to solve a problem. But electrics? No.
Not everyone is all panicked about the carbon boogyman. Now go back to reading Gore’s fiction, and get out of the way of people with solutions.
Solutions to what, I wonder?
There are two separate issues: 1. The use of oil, which funds extremism and jihad, and is used almost exclusively for transportation.
2. The problem of carbon and climate change.
The two problems are related, but not identical.
Better Place will help a lot with the first problem, since it has the potential to put OPEC out of business.
Better Place may help a little or a lot with the second problem, depending on other developments in energy technology. Definitely it is more efficient to produce electricity at Carnot efficiency at a power station than to have a car carry around its own power plant, like a tortoise carrying its house on its back. If renewable technologies are invented, so much the better.
By the way there is a third problem:
3. Ground level pollution and smog generated by burning gasoline in traffic.
Better Place will help a great deal with this, since electricity can be generated away from congested areas, and pollutants removed by scrubbers.
So no, this technology will not solve all problems, but it may solve two major ones. A good start.
The point about manufacturing of EV cars being sources of pollution is correct, but, of course, the alternative is not “no cars” but “ordinary cars.” The amount of pollution is probably about the same or less for EV cars. It is the metric of “ordinary cars” that needs to be compared to EVs.
Good to know, that in countries Renault ZE contemplates implementing eCars, power production is about 90% carbon free (France, Denmark, Isreal, etc… ) US is not in the loop ! REgarding the other argument on pollution, just look at the pollution issued by processing oil from the drill to your car (extraction, pipeline, plant – I live next to one the produces 1 400 000 tonnes of CO2 a year (Fezin France) – transport by truck to oil station, and last but not least the fueling of your car that lets out more gaz than any of the other steps. Not talking about fuel car engines production (steel extraction, transport, steel plants etc…. ) that you don’t have in ZE cars.
Northern Lights
The idea of Israel without petroleum might soon be “inoperative” at least as far as Natural Gas goes. At current technology, Nat Gas fueled vehicles have about 1/3 the range of gasoline fueled equivalent vehicles. Ergo, 100+ miles range at current technology. Not Bad. -S-
“Plus, the vehicles employ a braking regeneration technology that will prolong the life of brakes”…isn’t this a general feature of electric and hybrid vehicles? (Plus, it has been used on electrically-powered trains for at least 80 years)
How does battery-switching reduce the total battery cost? You still need one battery per vehicle on the average; switching them around may solve the charging problem but does not change the total ratio of batteries to cars.
The potential generation of power from roadways is actually pretty small: if you could generate enough power from the passage of the vehicle to power the vehicle, you’d be talking about perpetual motion.
This whole post reads more like a press release than a serious piece of analysis or reporting.
I had a discussion about electric vehicles with the CEO of Better Place while he was still with SAP. The simple conclusion was that they would never achieve their full potential unless the industry considers the battery to be part of the fuel delivery system – rather than part of the vehicle itself. Then the right solutions can be worked out.
But even so, this only works if paired with nuclear power generation. Observations in posts above are correct that there is no net ecological gain otherwise – and maybe it even gets worse. Moving vehicles with electric power is only half as energy efficient as doing so directly with oil/gasoline. And being able to thumb our noses at the Middle East and Hugo Chaves is scant justification for going off on a flight of fancy about mass scale wind or solar power generation.
This is the first concept for electric cars that makes any sense.
On the surface, at least, it’s brilliant.
I don’t think it would ultimately lower the cost of transportation, but it seems to have the potential to dramatically reduce our dependency on oil. Wouldn’t that be a godsend!! Energy costs wouldn’t decrease much because electricity is no more free than is gasoline, but perhaps the batteries could all be charged during off-peak hours and utilize underused off-peak capacity, which might limit requirements for new infrastructure. If electic motors are significantly cheaper to maintain than internal combustion engines, then that could be a savings, but that isn’t as significant as fuel costs.
Hasn’t anyone here seen the huge flaw in the author’s reasoning? The author claims that swapping batteries will bring the cost of an electric vehicle down to $20,000 or less. How does that happen? Is it because he isn’t counting the cost of the battery in the purchase price of the car? If so, who pays for the battery pack? Someone has to, battery packs in electric vehicle can cost thousands of dollars and have a lifespan of only a few years before they wear out.
It is unlikely that any private company would purchase millions of auto battery packs worth thousands of dollars each and simply give them out to car owners for little more than the cost of filling up a gas tank, even in a rental arrangement. The only way this could work is if the government subsidized the cost of the battery, resulting in yet another government attempt to prop up an industry which cannot stand on its own. This approach solves nothing, it simply moves the problem from the consumer to somewhere else.
Everything depends on competition (i.e. the price of alternatives,) and whether or not someone can make a profit at the price consumers are willing to pay (better known as free market economics). There is no free lunch as you suggest and if you take the government subsidies and arm twisting out of it, I don’t think anyone knows if it could be successful. Whether or not tax payers should be coerced into subsidizing this scheme in the name of the environment or our geo-political benefit is another question (I think we should not). But the point is that this method has a better chance because the convenience and flexibility is at least the same as stopping to pump gas. And as someone pointed out, we can more effectively do grid load balancing because the charging can take place at low periods – and this minimizes generating capacity requirements.
Under a scheme where the battery itself is part of the fuel delivery system, the initial cost of batteries will be borne by the charged battery pack providers and amortized over many reuses. The car manufacturers would need to provide the appropriate mechanical, electrical and diagnostic interfaces so that the owner/user would have confidence that the newly racked-in pack was functioning properly. To #19, the owner would not think about a “new” or “used” battery – just another “fill up” with the gauges telling them that they got the charge they paid for and the that the regenerative charging from braking was functioning properly. At least that’s the theory.
The idea of leasing the battery brings up a host of problems. Auto manufacturers are very tight-lipped about the cost of the battery pack in vehicles. It has been estimated that the cost of the battery for the Nissan Leaf is $9,000. As a very conservative estimate that would probably add at least $11 to the cost of a battery change. So how would the battery owner recover the costs? By charging a fee each time the battery is replaced? What if consumers recharge their own battery in their garage and simply turn the battery pack in just before it fails, the battery pack owner would pay for the battery and receive almost no revenue in return for it.
It would also be very difficult for charging stations to manage the number of spare battery packs. Gasoline is dirt cheap in comparison to EV battery packs, so gas station owners can store enough spare gas in their tanks to handle almost any daily customer load. By contrast, battery packs are very expensive and require hours to recharge. If charging stations do not keep a large number of spare batteries in stock for any conceivable vehicle they will run out during the day. Keeping too many on stock would result in a large fixed inventory cost which must be passed on to consumers. It’s sounds like a nice idea on paper, but with many issues likely to prevent practical application.
You realize the battery pack is not leased either?
“If so, who pays for the battery pack?”
Perhaps the cost of the battery is recouped by the fee for swapping batteries. Basically, the consumer would then lease the battery instead of buying one, which would be appealing to many since it would reduce the up-front cost. The leasing company could even be a 3rd party.
My laptop battery lasted 8 month.
Remember that petroleum is way too valuable to burn. Even the transfer to an another polluting source with less efficiency is an improvement if it curtails petroleum use.
They stole my idea. Great for them!
A little bit of irony….. Israelis found in the last months a great amount of oil and gaz in their land and sea…..
The one problem I see is that the batteries have to be leased and not owned. Switching batteries if you owned yours, means that your new battery is now is in another car.
Congratulations Israel! This tiny country keeps adding to medical advancement and technology that benefits the whole world. All this innovation while surrounded by bloodthirsty Islamists. There are already companies who’ve perfected the batteries. Definitely worth getting the world off oil and its aiding the terrorist countries that fund violence all over the world.
An overlooked benefit: Battery packs can be concentrated or spread out and generally allow greater flexibility in placement. This can make for better balance and stability. A family sedan can steer as precisely as a mid-engine Ferrari or Porche Boxter.
Meantime, in the Judea, Samaria, Jordan, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, they’re busily figuring out how to make a better homicide bomb vest.
The essential thing to remember here is that this ONLY works if people don’t have to change their behavior. Because Americans won’t do that, and we all know it.
Americans won’t limit their driving in order to have one of these cars.
Americans won’t pay more in time or money for the battery recharge than they would for filling up the tank.
Just not gonna happen. If you can essentially replicate the current system with the new electric cars, then the transition might work. But don’t expect Americans to give things up for “the greater good.” They won’t, and if you think they will, you haven’t been paying attention.
BTW, I hope this does work, because I would love to see the disgusting House of Saud go broke.
That percent on the right who see driving oversize vehicles and brag of getting poor gas miles are the most repugnant to me.
They think the joke is on liberals but the joke is on a dependent America while Chavez, Putin, Iran laugh all the way to the bank.
Americas buys oil mostly comes from Venezuela, Mexico, and Canada. Still our consumption is such a large part of the whole worlds consumption that we drive the prices way up for like when Iran sells oil to France, Japan, or China. A lot of conservatives would well serve America by rethinking their positions on Electric cars. A 9/11 anniversary is a perfect time for such sober reflection.
America has plenty of oil and gas. Politics makes it unavailable.
Thank you Present ∅bama.
Oil companies have so much oil that BP gave millions of barrels of free oil to the Gulf Coast.
Drill, Baby, Drill!
100miles isn’t enough to be practical.
Plus, are ALL electric cars going to be compatible with each other?
If not,you’ll have so many different battery configurations that nothing will work with each other and consumers wont buy into it.
And what happens when the car company changes technology in a few years (as they ALWAYS do) and comes up with different battery types? Will your 2-year-old car become obsolete and not be able to get a new battery?
This is a formula for an epic failure of the electric car….
Two Comments:
1) I’m pretty sure that many of our world’s greatest technological achievements will be created from Israel. What kind of Dark Age would we be looking at if Israel were suddenly destroyed? I shudder to even contemplate the consequences.
2) I wonder if anyone hasn’t considered Tesla’s idea of Wirelessly transmitting electricity along freeways/highways? Although almost upon immediately thinking about it, the logistics for that would be almost as challenging if not more so.
100 miles won’t cut it in US. 200 miles per charge @ $20k and I might buy one.
iThis recycling of the battery will significantly drop the price of the vehicle down to $20,000 or less, the company claims. /i
The retail price perhaps, but the total costs to manufacturer will be the same, maybe more because for the system to work there have to be more batteries than cars. Their business plan seems to be based on turning a profit charging for electrons. Will Project Better Place let their customers charge their own batteries?
This could be the innovation that causes electric cars to make sense financially for people. You buy the car, but you lease the batteries (or perhaps they’re free and are paid for by the purchase of charging). Of course, electric cars’ viability still depends on the same factors:
1) How expensive the cars are.
2) How expensive the batteries are, and how long they last.
3) The miles that can be achieved versus the size and weight of the battery.
4) How fast and efficiently they can be recharged.
The good part is that all these factors will continue to get better over time as advancements are made. The ease of switching batteries with their idea makes the electric car more attractive to more people, you can now use them on longer trips much more easily.
Has Israel Just Figured Out How to Make the Electric Car Worthwhile?
They _may_ have found a way to make urban transport by electric car
economically viable, _if_ the Urb in question treats the system as
a new, much more practical kind of public transportation system,
and is willing to fund the conversion in return for the car builder
mass producing a single, simple, standard design, and the consumer
buying it; Think of it as a ‘VolksTaxi’.
Each charging station should have its own 100 MW mini-nuke, and have
the secondary function of providing emergency power for the Urb.
I clicked on the link for Better Place. The moment I saw Bar Refaeli’s endorsement I knew it was completely hooey. I would be far more reassured if I saw an endorsement by that great scientist, Leonardo da Vinci-Caprio.
Anyway doesn’t an electric battery station use gas to create the electricity? Isn’t this just six of one, half-dozen of the other? The individual consumer may feel as if he is doing something noble but he’s being fooled. Just as much gas is being consumed, just not by him.
There is a device call an ultracapacitor. It can be charged up in under five minutes and does not have the chemical cycling fatigue of bateries. The chemical cycling makes battery driven cars forever imposible. Theere will always be a chemical fuel more costeffective than batteries. Fuel cells and ultra capacitors will be more cost effective than batteries
Right now the ultrcapacitors for a 200 mile range car with 1960 grade crash protection or better would be $20,000 but would last at least twenty years and comparts to the current gas fuel system’s $1,000 cost. The fuel cell technology is not that well defined in cost and costs for batteries after 5 uears are poorly defined
None of the electric technologies will deliver advantages over a 1947 New Yorker except for zeroing out local pollution. In the Nortwest or California with local Geothermal sources available electric cars could be pollution free but who is building Geothermal power plants? Certainly not the EPA.
Until now I’ve never been a fan of the whole electric car deal because its weaknesses are so self-evident. But the combination of technologies mention in this article make a lot of sense.
Leave it to Israel to figure out a way to make this dream come true, and not in some far off future, but right now. Israel is already doing it. Their idea for installing energy generators under the roads is particularly clever.
Between this, and Israel’s recent discovery of an immense natural gas field off the coast of Haifa that will be cleanly fueling the country in a few years (as well as the discovery of a major oil field) should make Israel 100% energy self-sufficient in the not too distant future.
For a tiny country struggling against terrific odds, Israel has done far more than most to help pave the road ahead in medicine, communications, technology, farming… And coming soon, energy and transportation.
I predict that over the next 25 years, Israel’s energy and transportation ideas and technologies will become common place around much of the world. It will be a whole new era. If, that is, She can survive Obama, boycotts, divestment, terror, Ahmadinejad, Hamas, Hezbollah, the EU, and the UN that long. Go Israel!
As to the range issue, I am sure that someone will develop an after-market trailer/generator as well as a sound generator so that the vehicle’s silence will not be a hazard to pedestrians.
Some of the recharge stations just might have their own natural gas fueled electric generators to deal with peak use costs of the grid.
Many current gas stations will be of insufficient square footage to store battery packs during re-charge and those awaiting usage.
Electric Cars, How about if I take the arguments against them and put them in their historical parallels.
-1885 So Mr. Benz you say this “MotorWagen” as you call it can travel half as fast as my horse but costs 3 times as much and breaks down all the time and cant pull a plow? I will stick with my horse thank you and you can stick with being a fool. Your Father must be ashamed stop fooling around with this noisy dirty nonsense and get a real job.
-1949 so you say this giant “computer” as you call that fill this whole room and can add 2+2 and come up with 4 in less then 10 minutes and costs a million dollars? You are a fool sir why I can do that in my head almost instantly. Your father must be ashamed of you stop fooling around with wiz bang nonsense and get a real job.
Lots of ignorance displayed by the posters.
1. $20k for a car in Israel is VERY LOW.
2. the owner of the car does not a)own the battery, b)lease it, c)maintain it… if it goes bad is PBP problem, same thing if it becomes obsolete.
3. there will be many batteries sitting in reserve at the swap stations, but they wont sit unused.. they will be used to buffer intermittent renewable power or to stabilize the grid.. the power company will pay PBP for this.. and its part of their business model, the battery is used 100% of the time, like airlines use expensive airplanes, amd thus allowing PBP to charge customers less for use of the battery.
4. you are buying electric miles just like you buy minutes for your phone.. pay only for what you need.
5. as batteries improve, PBP will gradually insert them into the rotating stock of batteries.. as the batteries age they will be taken out of car duties but will be used in stationary applications.. probably extending the profitable life of the battery out to 15-20 years.
6. since the batteries are not permanently installed in a car, PBP can afford to use much cheaper batteries that dont have to last 8 to 10 years on the road.. substantial costs savings are possible.
7. PBP promises that you will save money with their miles plan.. it will be more economical than paying for gasoline or diesel.
8. if for some crazy reason you want out, then buy a battery from a 3rd party supplier and plug it in.
Battery swapping is not a solution.
Sure, it sounds great, because you’re all thinking about the situation in which the swap station has a charged up battery ready to plunk into your vehicle.
The problem is that they can’t give *your* battery to anyone else for eight hours.
Unless you’re first in line when the place opens in the morning, you’re not going to get a charged battery.
Funny that it happens the year that Israel is discovering huge reserves of natural gas and oil !
This article reminded me of the sort of thing you see in Popular Science and Popular Mechanics touting 20 year away technology as though it’s going to be ubiquitous tomorrow. I’d be willing to bet that it will be at least ten years before 20% of Israeli cars are running on this technology?
And Israel is an almost ideal marketplace for this technology but tucked in the article is mention that a huge tax incentive is necessary to get it started up.
Anybody want to guess how long it will be before such a technology will work with 100% reliability in places like Chicago with subzero winters and lots of road salt and grime to gum up connectors and such?
It isn’t just the corrosion issue. What about heat/air conditioning/defrosting windows? I’ll keep my SUV, thanks anyway.
The real answer will be revealed when Better Place announces the Price-Per-Mile that consumers must pay. Knowing the cost of the battery, cost of electricity, cost of swapping stations, etc; The cost per mile will need to be pretty high for the EV. On the other hand, the government may supply a significant subsidy (or tax relief) and make the plan workable.
Notable is that in the US, we are not heading in this direction at all. All cars for the US market (except maybe Hawaii) will have fixed batteries. There are many advantages to that system.
Also worth considering is Chevy’s Volt with 40 miles electric and then uses gasoline. All-in-all this may be a better solution.
Thanks
John C. Briggs
I have to say, the one theme that stands out, while reading these comments is “No-one has followed Better Place”!
(or at least, very few of you…)
All of you, go to http://www.betterplace.com and read about their Solution, Global Progress, the whole concept before you can comment on this issue.
This is not Pie-In-The-Sky, this is happening…
Facts:
They have the money, they’ve funded the hardware and software developments needed to pull it off…
They have the partnerships required to pull it off…
They are proving their concepts everyday.
Think about:
* Cell phone infrastructure has evolved over the last 25+ years… not over night… the EV industry will evolve faster with Battery Swap technology…
* There is no one-place to get your vehicle’s energy… people will drive daily, park and charge nightly and will Rarely need to swap their battery for further range, it will just be there if needed…
* Better Place supports the outlets in parking ramps and street parking so drivers can maintain a charge while running around town…;
* Subscribers pay a monthly charge for their energy… everyone does it now for their utilities, I even pay monthly for my gasoline… I would much rather pay monthly to guarantee a reliable battery in my vehicle rather than need to shop for and buy a new one every 4 or 5 years…
* there is much more…
Again, read up on Better Place… this is what’s already happening in Israel, Denmark, Tokyo and should be happening here!
BTW: Better Place is doing this development outside of the USA because they know other countries and companies are more willing to invest in the concept than we are… being so spoiled by Cheap Oil, et al…
This idea might work well for a country the size of Cook County, Illinois. But in the United States?
I will soon be taking a “short” trip to visit my daughter. She lives 700 miles away from me. If this technology was available in the United States … and mandated by the Obama Administration (no doubt) … I would have to stop and swap batteries about every 90 miles. If it’s raining, or I’m driving at night, or I need the air conditioner, does the distance drop to 50 miles?
Will I have to stop at the “Battery Station” 28 times, on this round trip?
Electric cars are simply not worth the money, unless the car never leaves a 20-mile radius from home. And the electricity has to come from somewhere to recharge these billions of batteries, doesn’t it? Of course, we can’t build nuclear plants in the States, and that leaves oil, coal, or gas fired power plants to provide the power.
Thanks, but no thanks. As someone said earlier, I’ll keep my SUV …
You sure nailed it Major! Comments here show how few people have educated themselves about Shai Agassi and Better Place.
Every single criticism voiced here is/has been addressed by Better Place and they are working on issues far far beyond this idle chit chat of these comments.
Like it or not, the switch is going to happen. Better to get up to speed sooner than later on at least the knowledge side of it. Oil in and of itself is not a bad thing. We just need to quit being addicted to it and use it properly.
One does not waste their last bottle of water washing their hands when walking in the desert. Why do the same with oil in cars as we find it harder and harder to find oil and the oil we do have cost more and more to get and it comes from politically volatile parts of the world and is polluting our planet at the same time that the population is exploding past a sustainable level?
If the current generations don’t start doing something, There will be far less of a future generation to worry about or solve the problems created in the past.