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Project Better Place
- Thread starter tonybelding
- Start date
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- Electric Vehicles
brianoflondon
Member
Renault Fluence Z.E. is the only car available at the moment. I have the slightly better equipped one.
Home charging is obligatory. Better Place will only sell the car to you if you can charge at home and included in the price is the installation of a level 2 charger at home. For higher mileage subscriptions (16,000 miles per year) they will install 2: one at home and one at an office.
I have publicly charged when needed or useful and I've swapped batteries 13 times though only 6 were essential (switching is fun and the kids like it). I've done 3700km now.
Many more details on my blog: http://www.israellycool.com/better-place/
Home charging is obligatory. Better Place will only sell the car to you if you can charge at home and included in the price is the installation of a level 2 charger at home. For higher mileage subscriptions (16,000 miles per year) they will install 2: one at home and one at an office.
I have publicly charged when needed or useful and I've swapped batteries 13 times though only 6 were essential (switching is fun and the kids like it). I've done 3700km now.
Many more details on my blog: http://www.israellycool.com/better-place/
brianoflondon
Member
If I reply with links do my posts get moderated? Hmmm
Again.... Renault Fluence ZE is the only car, I have the slightly better equipped one.
I charge at home: all Better Place customers must do this and BP install the level 2 charger at your home included in the subscription. All the electricity bills go to BP not to the home owner.
I've switched 13 times but only needed to 6 times. When I needed it, I really needed it like a 200 mile road trip last week. Impossible to make that trip without switches. Details on my blog which I won't link to as then the post will not show up.
Again.... Renault Fluence ZE is the only car, I have the slightly better equipped one.
I charge at home: all Better Place customers must do this and BP install the level 2 charger at your home included in the subscription. All the electricity bills go to BP not to the home owner.
I've switched 13 times but only needed to 6 times. When I needed it, I really needed it like a 200 mile road trip last week. Impossible to make that trip without switches. Details on my blog which I won't link to as then the post will not show up.
Adm
Active Member
You will need a couple more posts for that to stop. It is supposed to keep spam out of the forum
Here's the link: http://www.israellycool.com/2012/07/17/id-love-to-try-this-road-trip-in-a-tesla-model-s/
Here's the link: http://www.israellycool.com/2012/07/17/id-love-to-try-this-road-trip-in-a-tesla-model-s/
brianoflondon
Member
Thanks... actually I was going to link to my main summary page not the one that takes a swipe at the Tesla S 
I didn't want to come off looking like a troll in the first 3 posts!
I didn't want to come off looking like a troll in the first 3 posts!
JRP3
Hyperactive Member
I skimmed thru his blog at Better Place | Israellycool, answers are there. In short:
- uses Renault Fluence Z.E. with the 22kWh pack
- 4 swapping stations were online when he took delivery of his car. More to come every week. Final roll out to cover all of Israel with redundant options is 40 stations. Brian uses them sometimes just for fun, because the kids want it.
- charging is at home, Brian has a private car port. public charging: the BP navigation system directs you to charge spots in range.
The cool thing is of course the navigation system which looks at driving style, distance, (and topography in the next release) to predict miles left when you arrive at your destination :love:
Compare that with the "miles left" display on current EVs that can jump wildly and leave the user with the sweat-inducing question "will I make it?"
orange=installed
grey=coming this year (2012)
- uses Renault Fluence Z.E. with the 22kWh pack
- 4 swapping stations were online when he took delivery of his car. More to come every week. Final roll out to cover all of Israel with redundant options is 40 stations. Brian uses them sometimes just for fun, because the kids want it.
- charging is at home, Brian has a private car port. public charging: the BP navigation system directs you to charge spots in range.
The cool thing is of course the navigation system which looks at driving style, distance, (and topography in the next release) to predict miles left when you arrive at your destination :love:
Compare that with the "miles left" display on current EVs that can jump wildly and leave the user with the sweat-inducing question "will I make it?"
orange=installed
grey=coming this year (2012)
Huh? He has a Better Place car where "pack swap" / "pack switch" is used instead of quick charging.
"Supercharging" is a Tesla specific term for quick charging. I suppose he may know what a "supercharger" is since he posted on this forum, but I don't think Better Place is currently offering any kind of DC quick charging, are they?
brianoflondon
Member
VolkerP got the main stuff from the blog: thanks!
Fluence has no quick charge capacity and Better Place has no interest in any because a 5 min switch beats any fast charge system today and for the foreseeable future.
Actually on the day I drove the car away there were no working switch stations! The first 4 came online about 2 weeks later. Now there are 10. The extreme north and south of Israel are still out of range (I could get to these places but not back!)
I found out today that the range prediction is using topology but that it's not so good dealing with regeneration: the engineer I spoke to says Renault's numbers are just too conservative and most drivers are getting more energy back than Renault thought they would.
I can already see that it predicts different amounts of energy used going up a route and going down. I'm going to make a video to demonstrate this next week I hope. Range prediction now tells you your battery % (or kWh) at the destination and the system can do multi-stop journeys. It has a "fix" wizard so if a journey results in a flat battery, it will find switch stations to route you through so the journey works. I want to show this on a video too.
Yes, the base S with a few hours charging at my destination could have made that trip but it would have needed 3 phase or more to do it in under 3 hours of charge. I'll be doing even longer trips over the coming weeks that would defeat even an 85kWh Model S.
Fluence has no quick charge capacity and Better Place has no interest in any because a 5 min switch beats any fast charge system today and for the foreseeable future.
Actually on the day I drove the car away there were no working switch stations! The first 4 came online about 2 weeks later. Now there are 10. The extreme north and south of Israel are still out of range (I could get to these places but not back!)
I found out today that the range prediction is using topology but that it's not so good dealing with regeneration: the engineer I spoke to says Renault's numbers are just too conservative and most drivers are getting more energy back than Renault thought they would.
I can already see that it predicts different amounts of energy used going up a route and going down. I'm going to make a video to demonstrate this next week I hope. Range prediction now tells you your battery % (or kWh) at the destination and the system can do multi-stop journeys. It has a "fix" wizard so if a journey results in a flat battery, it will find switch stations to route you through so the journey works. I want to show this on a video too.
Yes, the base S with a few hours charging at my destination could have made that trip but it would have needed 3 phase or more to do it in under 3 hours of charge. I'll be doing even longer trips over the coming weeks that would defeat even an 85kWh Model S.
IMO driver fast charging undermines the Better Place business model and I've heard Renault say a number of times that the Fluence was designed without it to capture the BP orders.
FWIW I've also been told that BP fast charge the batteries at their swap stations to reduce the amount of inventory they carry.
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Range estimation is an engineering "black art". No one seems to be able to get it exactly right. Perhaps it is close to impossible given the variables that can effect future driving.
brianoflondon
Member
On the flat the Better Place system is absolutely amazing. For me it can be ±0.2 kWh on a 10kWh drive (basically 50% of my range) unless I deliberately change my driving style wildly.
With hills it seems to be pretty good now going up hill, coming down needs some work.
It does include traffic predictions so if a particular segment of road starts reporting heavy traffic (and therefore a lower average speed than the speed limit) range prediction changes.
brianoflondon
Member
Inside the switch stations the entire area is cooled to around 19C. Before batteries are re-charged (when they've just been removed from a vehicle) they are rapidly cooled and then kept externally cooled during a fast charge. Switch stations hold around 8 batteries. That's enough because they can recharge them faster than they can give them out under normal circumstances.
Just tonight I sat with other pioneer owners and Shai Agassi and he told us that they're running the robots very very slowly at the moment (I thought this myself when I was given a peak inside one of the switch stations). I've seen modern industrial robots and the ones they're using are absolutely standard. They look like they're running in slow motion right now and this delivers a 5 minute swap. Shai said 2 minutes is possible but they'll get there gradually.
They now perform 1000 swaps with 1 or fewer problems before they will declare a station open.
The biggest annoyance of switching today is loosing the AC for around 5 mins.
brianoflondon
Member
One other thing: the Renault has a "Range remaining" screen on the dash. I've barely paid any attention to it because the Better Place Oscar prediction of charge at destination is so much more useful. If I want to know if I can get somewhere I punch in the destination and it tells me. If I can't get there it tries to fix the route with a trip to a switch station. That fails sometimes now because 10 stations isn't always enough. Once we have 38 it will be much more likely to succeed.
If you are stopping at a location with Level 2 charging you can punch in your stationary time and it bumps up your charge level at that spots accordingly for the next leg.
Tesla do the same thing but inside the car... the benefit is that you can 'fast' charge anywhere :smile:
By the way, I have been charging my Nissan LEAF at CHAdeMO stations sometimes. I can turn the car on (although it won't enable trying to drive away) to the point of being able to run the AC, listen to the radio, and play with the Nav maps all while the car is quick charging. I guess that is one benefit to keeping the traction battery in the car, although I am stuck there for ~30mins, not < 5...
TEG If you look I had quoted JRP3. who was talking about Brian's car range comparison to a Model S. That is, it's disegenious to say a battery swap station is the only was to compare long range EV viability. If Brian was driving the Model S instead of the Renault, and the swap station was instead a Supercharger, would the Renault win in Brian's comparison?
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