FAQS
Who We Are
Who are Better Place investors?
Are you in talks with other countries and car companies?
Does Better Place practice sustainability as a company?
How It Works
Why will electric cars work now?
What does Better Place mean by "advanced battery technology?"
What are charging spots and exchange stations?
What are the core elements of Better Place's subscription-based model?
Why was Israel selected as the first country for deployment?
What role does the government play in the mass deployment of electric cars?
Is the Better Place model scalable to meet the needs of larger countries like the United States?
Are you only targeting countries that have existing renewable energy resources?
What will be the well-to-wheel energy use of this system?
How will Better Place help the environment?
What are the promised performance specifications?
How much cheaper is electric than petrol per mile/kilometer?
Describe the proposed electric cars.
How can it be assured that the cars will be appealing to customers?
Electric car vs. Plug-in Hybrid (PHEV) - which is the better choice?
Get Involved
Who We Are
What is Better Place?
Better Place is a venture-backed company that aims to reduce global dependency on oil through the creation of a market-based transportation infrastructure that supports electric vehicles, providing consumers with a cleaner, sustainable, personal transportation alternative. The main obstacle to the mass adoption of electric cars is driving range and costly batteries. Better Place eliminates these barriers through the use of swappable batteries to extend the range of the car and by owning the batteries directly so the driver doesn’t have to. With an infrastructure of battery charging spots and battery exchange stations, drivers experience the feeling of infinite range at a cost less than the cost of driving an internal combustion engine (ICE) car.
Launched in October 2007, Better Place is building its first Electric Recharge Grids (ERG) in Israel, Denmark, Australia and California. Wide scale deployment of electric vehicles for both Israel and Denmark in 2011 while Australia and California and Hawaii are slated for 2012.
Who are Better Place investors?
CEO Shai Agassi has raised more than $200 million in funding from Israel Corp., Morgan Stanley, Ofer Group, VantagePoint Venture Partners, and private investors concerned about global climate change. For a complete list of our investors, click here.
Are you in talks with other countries and car companies?
Yes, Better Place is in active negotiations with approximately 25 countries, many of the major automakers and local partners in each target market. Better Place is unable, however, to name those entities due to confidentiality agreements currently in place.
Does Better Place practice sustainability as a company?
Better Place is committed to delivering transportation as a sustainable service by eradicating the need for oil as a fuel source and migrating toward renewable energy. By leveraging energy from resources such as wind, solar and other carbon free sources, transportation becomes part of a self-reliant infrastructure that not only reduces the financial impact of our oil addiction, but also improves and protects our environment and our health.
At Better Place, we lead by example.
We recognize that as a company driving sustainability within the marketplace, it is imperative we practice what we preach. Better Place is committed to incorporating environmental and community best practices within our daily routine. Collectively, we can spur meaningful progress.
How It Works
Why will electric cars work now?
It is becoming clear that the world’s addiction to oil cannot be sustained. Fuel prices are higher than ever before. At the same time technological developments, particularly those related to battery technology, mean that electric cars are becoming more advanced and less expensive.
The mass adoption of electric cars requires four elements:
• Electric cars produced by major car companies that are competitive with current ICE cars and offer comparable or superior customer experience;
• Safe and affordable batteries with a reasonable driving distance between charges;
• Exchangeable battery stations and ubiquity of charge networks to ensure high customer confidence in the availability of charging locations; and
• An affordable business model that reduces total electric car ownership.
What does Better Place mean by "advanced battery technology?"
Battery technology has greatly improved in recent years. In the past, the focus has been on creating batteries that held a charge for distances of more than 400 miles (644 km) per charge. This is an expensive, challenging and a more futuristic undertaking. Better Place will deploy lithium ion based batteries which are considered today as the most advanced in the industry, being the safest, smallest, lightest and most efficient than ever before. By separating the battery from the car and making it a component of the infrastructure, we are taking a different approach. Because the battery is separated from the car, it can be recharged and replaced simply and efficiently through automated battery exchange stations. This approach allows us to create an ecosystem that uses battery technologies that are currently available, making electric vehicles an immediately viable alternative to fuel-powered cars.
What are charging spots and exchange stations?
The Electric Recharge Grid (ERG) refers to the infrastructure that Better Place implements on regional and countrywide scales. An ERG is a network of charging spots and exchange stations. Through its subscription models, vehicle owners are linked into a nationwide network of charge spots and exchange stations. When a consumer parks their car, the network synchronizes the car with the smart electric grid to recharge the battery. When a driver travels a longer distance, the driver can swap batteries at an exchange station to get a fully charged battery in less time than it takes to stop and fill your tank with petrol today. Because Better Place owns the batteries, we can extend the range of the electric cars and lower the total cost of ownership.
What are the core elements of Better Place's subscription-based model?
Better Place is a mobility service provider that has a subscription-based model. This model enables consumers to own electric cars for a fraction of the cost of comparable, ICE cars. The model is similar to those seen in the mobile market where wireless network operators offer customers subscription-pricing options and various models of mobile phones at significantly reduced rates. The batteries that power the cars are owned by and considered part of the Better Place network. This model dramatically alters the economics of electric car ownership for drivers, while preserving the social contract drivers have with their cars. To match multiple customer segments, Better Place will offer several car models and subscription pricing packages that will reduce total cost of ownership and subsidize the car as part of this package.
Why was Israel selected as the first country for deployment?
In Israel, where 90% of car owners drive less than 70 kilometers (about 44 miles) per day and all major urban centers are less than 150 kilometers (about 93 miles) apart, electric cars will be the ideal means of transportation and could therefore cover most of the population’s transportation needs.
What are the requirements for a geography/area to be a viable candidate for the Electric Recharge Grid (ERG) system?
The areas most attractive for initial deployments have high population densities and commuter traffic. Ideally they are relative transportation “islands.” In smaller states or countries, Better Place can complete system deployment to support electric cars nation/statewide. For larger countries, Better Place will begin in the dense urban areas and expand from there. This deployment methodology is very similar to that employed by mobile operators.
What role does the government play in the mass deployment of electric cars?
The Better Place model can be implemented without immediate government support; however the rate of consumer adoption depends on government policy. Government can put in place consumer friendly policies / incentives that reduce the price of the total cost of the electric car for early adopters.
Is the Better Place model scalable to meet the needs of larger countries like the United States?
The Better Place model is a repeatable framework that can be scaled to meet the needs of countries like the U.S. As testified before a Select Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, the cost to develop the Better Place infrastructure in the U.S. is estimated at $500 per car, almost totaling a year’s worth of oil imports at $600 billion. That equates to $100 billion of infrastructure and $500 billion of solar, wind and wave generation. The cost of one year of oil would get the U.S. off of oil for transportation.
By removing a nation’s addiction to oil, you minimize the exportation of billions of dollars spent annually to fuel automobiles. The economic stimulation combined with the creation of a new job market enable countries to stand independent and cultivate a nation that is free from the confines of a natural resource in decline.
Are you only targeting countries that have existing renewable energy resources?
Better Place is open to working with any country interested in eliminating its dependency on oil. A key component of Better Place is to power the electric cars with carbon free or renewable energy. Therefore, where a country may not have renewable energy available, Better Place will assist in building a roadmap for migrating from dirty power plants to renewable energy.
What will be the well-to-wheel energy use of this system?
Better Place will contract for renewable or carbon free electricity. As such, the operational carbon footprint will be essentially zero. This compares to an ICE car with a carbon footprint of approximately 5 tons of carbon dioxide per year. (The ICE vehicle carbon dioxide footprint is based on a vehicle efficiency of 30 miles per gallon, driving 12,000 miles per year and a petrol well-to-wheel footprint of 27 pounds of carbon dioxide per gallon).
How will Better Place help the environment?
By taking cars off oil and fueling them with renewable or carbon free electricity, Better Place will significantly reduce the environmental impact of driving across all three media, air, water and waste.
As an example of the magnitude of the benefits, at present worldwide, there are 700 million cars producing 2.8 billion tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) annually. If all of these vehicles were electric, running on renewable or carbon free electricity, we would reduce our global anthropomorphic C02 emissions by approximately 10%.
What are the promised performance specifications?
The electric vehicles will be designed to have as good and in some cases better performance
specifications from the comparable internal combustion engine cars. This includes rapid acceleration, good top speed and familiar handling characteristics.
How much cheaper is electric than petrol per mile/kilometer?
The cost of electricity per mile/kilometer is largely driven by the cost of the battery pack. The debate has long been around the number miles/kilometers a battery pack can last. Better Place expects the costs of the battery packs to come down significantly as economies of scale are realized. One of the key advantages for electric drive is the predictable cost for the entire generation-to-wheel on electric drive. The cost is known up front, on the day the car is bought, and the price will decrease from there. ICE cars, on the other hand, are dependent on a natural resource that is being rapidly depleted and is getting more expensive every day.
Describe the proposed electric cars.
The electric cars that will be offered to consumers will be produced by leading car manufacturers in the industry. They will look like the cars we drive today. There will be no compromises to ensure they meet or exceed the capabilities of ICE cars today. The electric cars will be subject to the same safety standards as petrol cars (i.e., crumple zone, passive and active restraint, anti-lock braking) and will offer fully loaded capabilities such as high end sound system, navigation, Bluetooth and air conditioning.
Important to note that electric cars will be quieter, cleaner (no tailpipe, no emissions), less expensive to own and operate (no fuel costs), and more reliable (less maintenance) than ICE cars.
How can it be assured that the cars will be appealing to customers?
Electric cars will deliver a better experience than ICE cars. In fact, the exterior and interior of the electric car will resemble that of current ICE models with key features that consumers have come to expect in their automobiles. Performance of the electric car will be as good if not better than the petrol equivalency (e.g., faster acceleration when overtaking other cars). Safety and maintenance are improved through use of regenerative breaking (no pads) and fewer moving parts. Our first models of cars will be top-of-the-line sedans/SUVs, which will be fully equipped cars with high-end comfort features and will be manufactured by the leading car companies in the industry.
Electric car vs. Plug-in Hybrid (PHEV) - which is the better choice?
Both types are better then the conventional Internal Combustion Engine cars, but electric cars use absolutely no petrol while PHEVs do. Depending on driving style and distances, PHEVs may offer only a 20% reduction in petrol use to a completely fuel-based car so the addiction to oil remains present.
The issue PHEVs address is that of range and the perceived limitations of a dedicated electric vehicle (EV). PHEVs address the range extension with an on-board fuel-based mechanism in each car, whereas Better Place sees the extension mechanism as being part of the infrastructure. This will be very much as it is today with fuel-based cars, which use petrol stations as their infrastructure extension mechanism only with Better Place, this enables unlimited range without the use of oil.
Get Involved
How will Better Place choose partners?
Better Place is establishing operating companies, which include local partners in each market that can participate in the deployment and on-going operations of Better Place. The majority of the company staffing, infrastructure deployment, delivery of services and on-going operations will be from the local market.