brianoflondon
Member
Excuse me, 2 mistakes in my reply:
I meant 40 swap stations per 20,000 vehicles, not 400
That means a swap station 10-15 miles from where I live, around 20-30 minutes away. It's all in the BP website with the planned station coverage, there are 2 stations at that distance.
The second thing is - 500$ was supposed to be the quick charging station compatible with the Renault 43KW chameleon charger, not the charger itself.
Corrected previous post in editing.
Edwargo has done a pretty admirable job of figuring out the original business plans of Better Place from first principles. I agree with most of his calcs but I think that, unfortunately, where Better Place really gets intersting financially is behind the scenes with the grid and energy providers. The cars and the customers are probably a break even play: the re-use of those assets for grid storage especially once lunatic carbon policies and targets are combined with government grants makes this whole future prediction game rather hard for outsiders like us.
I've kind of stopped doing that. I don't think it's all plain sailing for Better Place corporate but 78 days into ownership it's all just getting better as a customer. They're opening stations at two or three every two weeks and the car continues to work.
I have a sneaking suspicion they're short filling the batteries a little at the moment, because it's been unremittingly hot for 2 months now (this has been a really hot summer even for Israel and basically my car's ambient temperature has never been below 29C for 2 months now even at night). I know this because I can switch the display from % to kWh and whereas before I used to see 21.7 in the morning now I'm seeing 20.5. Both of which are called 100%.
Nevertheless it still continues not to matter. I'm either driving easily beyond range and in need of a switch or easily under range. The car continues to be an absolute joy to drive and is easily superior to anything costing up to 50% more to purchase. As an example, I just bought a diesel Hyundai Santa Fe which costs roughly twice what my Renault cost. It's a great modern diesel and it really is pretty quick, but I just can't enjoy driving it after driving electric!
My costs are fixed relative to gasoline (which has gone up mostly on the strength of the dollar).
It might be a temporary solution, but by the end of this year close to or beyond 1% of new deliveries of cars in Israel will be battery powered. That blows every other country in the world way out of the water. It's a huge achievement. People will be driving these cars who have no interest in how the car works, just that it works. That is also, I think, going to be a unique factor. I just don't believe there will be a big enough battery at a cheap enough price for the next 5 years to do what I now do with switching.
Looking online and reading forums I don't think there are EV drivers anywhere in the world who are dis-interested: perhaps a few Volt owners but even they had to make a huge internal financial decision to pay all that extra money up front. It's very important that the plug in EV becomes just normal: petrol, diesel, electric, whatever as the kids would say.
As the Fluence ZE starts getting deployed in the company car fleets and given to employees who didn't seek it out, that's when it's going to get interesting. I believe this is starting to happen now.
