Better Place: what went wrong for the electric car startup? | Environment | guardian.co.uk Way to draw the wrong conclusion.
Better Place Reports Loss Of $454 Million In 2012, Is Better Place receives "going concern" warning - Globes
The nail is in the coffin. Exclusive: Better Place to file for bankruptcy - The Term Sheet: Fortune's deals blogTerm Sheet
Better Place to file for bankruptcy FORTUNE -- Electric car company Better Place is planning to file for bankruptcy within the next several days, Fortune has learned. The move will come seven months after the ouster of charismatic founder Shai Agassi, and five months after his successor -- Evan Thornley, CEO of Better Place Australia -- also departed. http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2013/05/24/exclusive-better-place-to-file-for-bankruptcy/?iid=HP_River
Too bad, I wanted to see this concept work. However, it always seemed too capital intensive to get going. There are plenty or wealthy folk in Israel who can afford the Model S and gas is very expensive in Israel. Wonder when Telsa cars will be available in Israel? Anyone know if there are any Roadsters in Israel?
If battery swapping ever does work as a business... well... it won't be for a while. They were way too early to market.
It was a good idea - reducing the up front cost of the car by leasing the battery and generating revenue from the swapping and charging - but it has two fundamental flaws: 1) It requires too much capital to get off the ground. 2) You need to convince automakers to tie their success to you. They didn't have enough of either.
Better Place files for bankruptcy | The Times of Israel Better Place to be liquidated - Globes Israeli electric car venture Better Place seeks to dissolve - Business - Israel News | Haaretz Daily Newspaper Death of Better Place: Electric car co. to dissolve | JPost | Israel News
I briefly looked at their business in 2009 or 2010 and I never could figure out how they expected to make it work in the U.S. Even with back of the napkin calculations the only way I could make the business case close was with a massive infrastructure and a huge number of their little short range BEV's on the road.
When I found out that you were required to pay whatever electric rates that BP wanted to charge, even in your own garage, and that you couldn't plug in at all when you were at the proverbial Grandma's house, I knew the plan was dead on arrival in the US.
Better Place file for bankruptcy So is this the final death of battery swap or is this tesla chance to pickup some cheap swap stations for model s Well I like the ideer abut battery swap, but really dislike Better Place Buisness model They only had one model with short range, and a buy the car and lease the battery model, that is now scaring the hell out of all the owerners (Renault have announce that they will make sure that they can rent the battery from Them)
If I understood their model correctly, you pay by miles. The BP charging station in your home (or anywhere) would have the electricity paid by BP. If you charged "out of network" you would be double charged (you pay by miles and your grandma pays for electricity too). It's misunderstandings about their model and also their constant comparison to cell phone carriers (which most people hate) that probably killed them.
Maybe not for the US, but in Israel which is comparatively small, already has Renault in the market and has a clear incentive to get off Middle-Eastern oil, I'm amazed they couldn't make this work.
Better Place CEO: A missed opportunity - Globes An issue that hadn't really occurred to me, until it was written:
Could happen...but I would think the highest value is in the cars. They will probably offer to sell them to owners; if they get other bids, they will probably just use that to set a floor on the price. I would think that Renault would offer to buy them, and save the expense of collecting them - they could just turn around and lease them to the owners on similar terms (but likely adjusted well downward if they don't offer swapping).
To me the smaller places made no sense at all for BP since swapping would be an expensive "feature" that had to be paid for but rarely or never needed. This means the premium BP subscribers were paying didn't provide them with anything special. Added to all the other problems that BP had and it was never difficult to see that they were doomed.