The steam car, the internal combustion engine automobile, and the electric car emerged as the main competing technologies in the late 1890s until the 1920s. The concept of exchangeable battery service was first proposed as early as 1896 in order to overcome the limited operating range of electric cars and trucks.
The concept was first put into practice by Hartford Electric Light Company through the GeVeCo battery service and was initially available for electric trucks. The vehicle owner purchased the vehicle from General Vehicle Company (GeVeCo, a subsidiary of the General Electric Company) without a battery and the electricity was purchased from Hartford Electric through an exchangeable battery. The owner paid a variable per-mile charge and a monthly service fee to cover maintenance and storage of the truck. Both vehicles and batteries were modified to facilitate a fast battery exchange. The service was provided between 1910 and 1924 and during that period vehicles using it covered more than 6 million miles. Beginning in 1917 a similar service was operated in Chicago for owners of Milburn Light Electric cars who also could buy the vehicle without the batteries.
Electric forklifts have used battery swapping since at least 1946 and a rapid battery replacement system was implemented to help maintain 50 electric buses at the 2008 Summer Olympics in China.
Better Place implemented a business model wherein customers entered into subscriptions to purchase driving distance similar to the mobile telephone industry from which customers contract for minutes of airtime. The initial cost of an electric vehicle might also have been subsidized by the ongoing per-distance revenue contract just as mobile handset purchases are subsidized by per-minute mobile service contracts. Better Place's goal was to enable electric cars to sell for $5,000 less than the price of the average gasoline car sold in the United States, or the impact of electric cars would be minimal. For example, the Prius hybrid had been sold for 13 years at a price of $4,000 more than other gasoline cars and had captured less than 2% of the worldwide car market.
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The Better Place approach was to enable manufacturing and sales of different electric cars separately from their standardized batteries in the same way that petrol cars are sold separately from their fuel. Petrol is not purchased upfront, but is bought a few times a month when the fuel tank needs filling. Similarly, the Better Place monthly payment would cover electric "fuel" costs including battery, daily charging and battery swaps. Better Place was to allow customers to pay incrementally for battery costs including electric power, battery life, degradation, warranty problems, maintenance, capital cost, quality, technology advancement and anything else related to the battery. The per-distance fees would cover battery pack leasing, charging and swap infrastructure, purchasing sustainable electricity, profits, and the cost of investor capital. All battery problems would be handled by Better Place which would then bundle the costs and bill their customers monthly for providing all the infrastructure.
The Better Place electric car charging infrastructure network was based on a smart grid software platform using Intel Atom processors and.NET Framework, or comparable vendors. This platform was first of its kind in the world and was to enable Better Place to manage the charging of hundreds of thousands of electric cars simultaneously by automatically time-shifting recharging away from peak demand hours of the day, preventing overload of the electrical grid of the host country. According to Agassi, Better Place would be able to provide electricity for millions of electric cars without adding a single electricity generator or transmission line by using smart software that oversaw and managed the recharging of electric cars connected with Better Place. A critique of the company's business model was later published.
Better Place encouraged governments to mandate the use of international standards and open access to recharge across charging networks to facilitate competing networks. Standardization efforts such as SAE J1772, however, had not yet yielded global consensus as of August 2009. Better Place displayed Charge Spot charging stations that used a connector with the same pin layout as SAE J1772-2009 but housed in a non-standard, triangular plug. They also displayed a wall mounted charging station using IEC 62196 Type 2 receptacle. Battery pack switching outside of Better Place's network was not to be allowed. Better Place said it had pre-sold enough contracts to make its first deployed network in Israel profitable at launch.
Markets and pricing
Australia
In Australia a roll-out of 500 charge stations was planned to begin in the major eastern coast cities before expanding nationally. It was estimated that these would give comparable coverage to the existing 13,000 petrol stations then in operation. The total cost of this roll out was claimed to be between $1 and $1.25 billion AUD.
The first charge spot was installed in Canberra in late 2011, but in January 2013, after fewer than 20 public charge spots had been installed the rollout was halted and the board of Better Place decided to concentrate on its two existing markets, Israel and Denmark.
Better Place was also to be the preferred provider of home and dealership charging stations for the Holden Volt, with the partnership announced in July 2012.
China
In 2011, Better Place announced an agreement with China Southern Power Grid Company, the world's eighth-largest utility company. Before the end of the year, Better Place was going to open a battery switch station and joint education center in the southern city of Guangzhou. Shai Agassi said that China Southern Grid was embracing battery switch as the primary means of range extension. China Southern Grid Chairman Zhao Jianguo said that the battery-switch model might become mainstream in China and that the joint visitor center and battery switch demonstration project with Better Place would help promote electric-car adoption in China by allowing potential customers to experience this innovative solution.
China Southern Power Grid pilot projects and other joint activities were supposed to explore the benefits that switchable-battery electric cars and the networked infrastructure that supports them might deliver to the electric grid in CSG's service area, which spanned five provinces, one million square kilometers, and 230 million people in Southern China.
Electric utility State Grid Corporation of China planned to build over 2,351 electric-charging and battery-swap stations by 2016. These would have had 220,000 charging poles, but they did not indicate how many, if any, of them would have been battery-swap stations. The director of the State Grid smart grid research center commented "The construction of a large-scale charging station costs 20 to 30 million yuan ($3.05–4.57 million) and a small-scale one costs less than 10 million yuan, but it costs more than 100 million yuan to build a battery-swap station."
In April 2010, Better Place signed a memorandum of understanding with Chery Automobile, China's biggest independent car maker, to develop prototypes for electric vehicles to be used in regional state-sponsored pilot projects.
Denmark
Better Place partnered with Denmark's leading energy company, DONG Energy, in a €103 million Euro (770 million Danish Kroner) investment to introduce electric cars and infrastructure to Denmark. The country currently generates 20% of its electric power from wind energy, but much of it is exported because there is currently no way for utilities to store the excess power. Using the Better Place model, DONG hoped to take advantage of the existing electric grid and electric vehicle batteries to harness and store the abundance of wind-generated power, and distribute it appropriately for transportation consumption.
The Renault Fluence Z.E. sold in Denmark at a price of 205,000 DKK (€27,496 or US$38,378) including VAT plus the monthly fee for the switchable-battery. Consumers paid a one-time fee of 9,995 DKK (€1,341) for a private charging station and customers were offered a choice of five fixed-price switchable-battery packages based on kilometers driven per year. For more than 40,000 km (25,000 mi) a year the monthly fee was 2,995 DKK (€399) per month. The network commercial launch was in late 2011.
The first battery switch station in Denmark, out of 20 which were planned to be deployed across the country as part of the network of charging infrastructure, was unveiled in June 2011 at 55°44′1.5″N 12°27′36″E in Gladsaxe, near Copenhagen. Sales of the Fluence Z.E. began in late 2011, and
198 units were sold in Denmark through December 2012. Cumulative sales through April 2013 reached 234 units.
As of December 2012 there were 17 fully operational battery switch stations in the country, enabling Danish customers to drive anywhere across the country in an electric car. On 26 May 2013, and following the decision of the Board of Directors of Better Place's global company, Better Place Danmark A/S decided to begin bankruptcy proceedings. Because the batteries are owned by Better Place, Renault announced it would honor the existing agreement to around 500 customers that bought their electric cars through Better Place.
Hawaii
Better Place deployed about 80 charging stations and 154 charge points in Oahu, Maui, Kauai and the Big Island, and had almost 700 customers. The operation of the charging stations was acquired in March 2013 by OpConnect. No interruption of service was expected due to Better Place bankruptcy.
Israel
Israel was the first nation in the world to partner with Better Place to build an electric car infrastructure. Shai Agassi, former Better Place CEO, claimed that by 2016, plus or minus a year, more than 50% of cars sold in Israel would be electric.
Battery switch stations were supposedly opening to customers almost weekly in 2012. That map indicates with "orange circles" the handful of battery switch stations available in June 2012, and shows with "grey circles" the full buildout of battery switch stations expected by year's end. The Baran Group signed an agreement with Better Place stating its intention to build 51 battery switch stations over the course of 2011 to cover all of Israel. However progress was not nearly as rapid as was planned.
According to the Financial Times around 400 corporations in Israel signed letters of intent to begin switching their fleets to Better Place electric car network as soon as the service becomes available. This represented a potential of 80,000 electric cars. Out of the 100,000 Renault Fluence Z.E. that Better Place agreed to buy from Renault, the company claimed to have already signed around 70,000 orders, most of them from commercial fleet customers.
Better Place launched its first battery-swapping station in Israel, in Kiryat Ekron, near Rehovot in March 2011. The station was supposed to be the first of approximately 40 stations to begin operating in the near term. The battery exchange process took five minutes. The company also erected over 1,000 functional charging spots for the cars and thousands more were supposed to be put in place by the end of 2011, according to the CEO of Better Place Israel.
Orders for the Renault Fluence ZE in Israel began in July 2011. According to Better Place, their customers regular maintenance costs would be about 40% less than for regular family cars, insurance also will be less at around NIS 3,700 a year, and its comprehensive solution of electric car and services would cut annual vehicle maintenance costs by 20%.
The first deliveries of the Renault Fluence Z.E. took place on 22 January 2012 and around 100 electric cars were allocated to Better Place's employees. Better Place planned a staged delivery process as the infrastructure across the country was completed. Retail customer deliveries began in the second quarter of 2012. As of mid September 2012, there were 21 operational battery-swap stations open to the public in Israel. Cumulative sales through July 2012 reached 300 cars, and as of the end of October, just 490 cars had been sold, making the company's target of 4,000 customers by June 2013 a difficult goal to achieve. In October 2012, Better Place signed a deal with Elco to supply 125 cars worth NIS 15m. The 125 Renault Fluence ZEs were to be delivered through 2012 and 2013. As of December 2012, a total of 518 cars were sold in the country. In the first four months of 2013, a total 422 cars were sold, bringing the total to 940. Alan Gelman, chief financial officer said in January 2013 that the company had turned a corner in recent weeks with large sales to fleets and that the days of not selling cars were over Nevertheless, on 26 May 2013 the company filed for bankruptcy in Israel.
Customer qualifications
Better Place wanted electric car customers who could make a successful transition from range anxiety to ordinary range awareness within the company's growing infrastructure. During the sales process, Better Place aimed to educate and assess each customer's electric car suitability. The company was going to exclude drivers frequently traveling irregular routes that span the country. Eventually, Israel was supposed to have enough battery switch stations and recharging spots at parking garages, shopping centers, hotels, commercial areas, and elsewhere, to cater for most drivers.
At minimum, customers needed dedicated off-road parking at home and, for higher mileage drivers, Better Place was going to install charging spots at people's workplace. The preferred high-mileage customer might commute 130-kilometre (81 mi) each way between home and office. Lower distance customers might only need their home charging spot, with battery switching being infrequent.
Israel electric grid
Better Place charging stations were to have smart grid interactivity that automatically time-shifted the charging process away from peak electrical demand hours. Most critics claimed it was an attempt to monopolize the charging of car batteries, and had in fact the reverse effect, which discouraged many potential customers in Israel from buying Better Place's cars.
