Better place

This article describes the company. For the donation platform see betterplace.org .

Better place
legal form
founding	October 29, 2007
resolution	the end of 2013
Seat	Palo Alto , USA
management	Idan Ofer (Chairman) Aliza Peleg (VP of Operations) Joe Paluska ( CMO ) Moshe Kaplinsky (BP Israel CEO) Evan Thornley (BP Australia CEO) Jens Moberg (BP Denmark CEO)
Branch	Electric car infrastructure

Battery exchange station from Better Place 2014 in Israel

Better Place was a company based in Palo Alto that wanted to build a nationwide infrastructure for replacing drive batteries in suitable electric cars . The company was founded in 2007 by former SAP manager Shai Agassi , who resigned from his position in the company in October 2012. At the end of May 2013, the company filed for bankruptcy in Israel after last funding talks failed. The leftovers were sold to competitor Grngy for $ 450,000 in November 2013 . At times the company had attracted $ 850 million in investments.

Business model

According to Shai Agassi, the company name, originally Project Better Place , emerged from a question by Klaus Schwab at the 2005 World Economic Forum :

"How do you make the world a better place by 2020?"

"How can we make the world a better place by 2020?"

Agassi saw a solution to this question in turning away from oil for private transport.

Several cities and countries were convinced of the chances of realizing the corporate philosophy - these included Israel (commissioning in 2011), Denmark and Japan (field test with battery replacement stations since May 2009). Hawaii , the San Francisco Bay Area , Ontario and the southeast coast of Australia were also in the planning phase ; however, the company announced in January 2013 that it would initially focus on Israel and Denmark.

In detail, the business should work as follows:

• The customer buys an electric car without a battery from any vehicle manufacturer (in the pilot project it was the Renault Fluence ), but the battery is owned by Better Place.
• The energy (battery and electricity ) required for driving is provided by Better Place. With the support of sophisticated software, however , the customer only pays for kilometers driven, similar to a mobile phone contract.
• Batteries with a range of approx. 160 km are planned. These are charged at the customer's home, at work or in public parking lots with specially constructed stations.
• For longer distances, fully automatic battery changing stations are set up, in which the exhausted battery is automatically replaced by a charged one.
• The vehicles are basically powered by environmentally friendly electricity from wind turbines and solar power plants .

The outsourcing of the high prices for traction batteries from the acquisition costs , which should fall steadily, as well as the shift of the lifetime risk from the user to the operator were beneficial for the business model. If one assumes that the exchange stations have a large number of a few types of battery available, these could have played an important role in buffering power peaks in the power grid. In this case, billing the exchanged energy would have been very easy. For the end user , the quick, automated "refueling process" and the certainty that they could also cover long distances with an e-mobile would have been an advantage.

The business model was hampered by the need to specify one or a few battery types, as well as the necessary storage and the necessary uniform exchange mechanism, which severely restricted the manufacturers' freedom of design and their influence on the drive battery as the most expensive individual component . The monitoring of the vehicles required for billing is also viewed critically for reasons of data protection .

Electric vehicles

For the development of electric cars, Better Place had won over the Renault-Nissan company , whose Renault Fluence car model was offered in a version with a replaceable battery . Better Place worked with A123 Systems and the Automotive Energy Supply Corporation (AESC) to develop the battery . Should be used lithium-ion batteries , which should ensure a range of 100 miles / 160 km away.

ZE Concept

ZE stands for Zero Emission (zero exhaust gases). From Renault more electric cars were presented to the project, such as the Renault Fluence ZE , the Kangoo ZE and the Renault ZOE . In order to optimize the range, the power consumers were designed to be particularly economical in addition to the engine such as lights, heating and air conditioning. Renault's Patrick Pelato announced production of 20,000 to 40,000 electric cars by 2011 and more than 100,000 for 2012.

Investors

The company was financed by venture capital investment companies . a. from Acorns to Oaks II, Esarbee Investments Canada, GC Investments, HSBC, Israel Cleantech Ventures, Lazard, Macquarie Capital, Maniv Energy Capital, Morgan Stanley, Musea Ventures, Ofer Brothers Group , VantagePoint Venture Partners, Vayikra Partners and Wolfensohn & Co. main shareholder was last Israel Corp.

Country projects

Israel

Shai Agassi , himself an Israeli, started the company with a project in Israel. The country, with a maximum distance of 150 km between urban centers and a population where 90% of car owners drive less than 70 km per day, seemed ideally suited for the designed cars with a range of 160 km. The government under President Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert signed a contract with Better Place and Renault-Nissan with the aim of building an infrastructure by 2020 that would make Israel independent of oil by 2020.

Better Place Israel's CEO was a major general. D. Moshe Kaplinsky, formerly Deputy Chief of the Israeli General Staff.

In March 2011 Betterplace presented the plans for the construction of 40 battery exchange stations. There were also 400 agreements on charging points , and 200 charging points should be implemented by the end of 2011. When Better Place filed for bankruptcy in May 2013, 940 Renault Fluence vehicles were in service, equipped with Better Place batteries. The battery exchange stations were shut down in 2013.

Denmark

Denmark was also seen as a country of a reasonable size for the battery replacement project. Better Place's contractual partners here were also Renault and, as the energy supplier, Dong Energy (Danish Oil & Natural Gas).

The European project was to be implemented from Denmark with a capital investment of 103 million euros. Former IBM manager Jens Moberg, CEO of Better Place Denmark, was therefore also appointed head of the Better Place Europe, Middle East and Africa Business Development unit.

Web links

Commons : Better Place  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Shai Agassi at the TED conference
• Deutsche Bank Research on Better Place in particular and electric cars in general , June 9, 2008 (PDF; 942 kB)
• Israeli electric car company insolvent. The failed dream of Better Place ( Memento from June 7, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) By Torsten Teichmann, ARD radio studio Tel Aviv, May 27, 2013. Retrieved on April 19, 2014

Individual evidence

1. ↑ "Press release on the application for insolvency" ( Memento of the original from August 18, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Betterplace  
2. ↑ Gnrgy buys Better Place for the price of an apartment in Tel Aviv . Green Prophet. 22nd of November 2013.
3. ↑ Another Clean Tech Startup Goes Down: Better Place Is Bankrupt . The Atlantic. Retrieved May 27, 2013.
4. ↑ Better Place: "Meet Our Team: Shai Agassi" ( Memento of the original from February 17, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
5. ↑ Auto-Magazin 2.0: "Better Place: Field test with battery replacement system starts"
6. ↑ ^{a b} ZDF : Adventure Knowledge: “Away from Oil - Nationwide electric charging station network planned in Israel” ( Memento of the original from January 31, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
7. ↑ ^{a b} Better Place: “Charging” ( Memento of the original from May 12, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
8. ↑ Better Place: "energy" ( Memento of the original from May 12, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
9. ^ Electric car, February 2012: Batteries for electric cars are getting cheaper and cheaper , inserted April 27, 2012
10. ↑ http://www.ftd.de/auto/autoindustrie/:ex-sap-vorstand-agassi-ladehemmung-fuer-den-autobatterie- Wechsler/ 70036924.html ( Memento from May 16, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
11. ↑ BetterPlace: partners and investors ( Memento of the original dated May 10, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed May 10, 2012 
12. ↑ Better Place: batteries ( Memento of the original from May 10, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed May 10, 2012 
13. ↑ Renault: "Renault ZE Concept: The electric car for tomorrow's mobility" ( Memento from November 22, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
14. ↑ CNET : "Electric vehicles are charging into Europe" , November 3, 2008
15. ↑ Better Place: Global Progress: "Israel" ( Memento of the original from May 15, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
16. ↑ Better Place: "leadership team: Moshe Kaplinsky" ( Memento of the original from May 16, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
17. ↑ "Better Place Unveils Network Deployment Roadmap for Israel, Offering Electric Car Drivers Complete Nationwide Coverage by End of Year" ( Memento of the original from May 11, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , press release, Better Place, 23 March 2011  
18. ↑ Israeli electric car supplier insolvent. focus.de, May 27, 2013
19. ↑ MAX CHAFKIN: A Broken Place The Spectacular Failure, July 4, 2014
20. ↑ Better Place: Global Progress: "Denmark" ( Memento of the original from December 25, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.