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I'm not sure how this model incorporates the demand for better batteries. Blue Rhino works because propane is a commodity and no-one is really shopping for lar
by roc 15y ago
I'm not sure how this model incorporates the demand for better batteries.
Blue Rhino works because propane is a commodity and no-one is really shopping for larger quantities of propane, or the ability to put the same amount of propane into smaller vessels. But batteries for electric cars are still undergoing massive innovation; not only in capacity, but in charge/discharge rates (for more-efficient capturing via regenerative braking and more-efficient transfer to the motors).
If Better Place is charging a flat-rate by the mile, what incentive do they have to offer better batteries? Their profit motive would seem to skew heavily toward freezing the characteristics of the launch-packs and running with that as long as possible; allowing improvements to feed their profit margin up until the moment of customer revolt (should that happen).
Allowing people to pay more to 'upgrade' to larger capacities or 'performance' packs would add to the inventory they need to keep on hand at their swap stations and complicate the process.
I guess my concern is that this plan reads as a bold bet that contemporary 100-mile pack performance is good enough.
And truly this isn't a question of servicing most people's daily commute, which I believe is under 30 miles for most everyone most everywhere. But when calculating the hassle involved in taking such a car on weekend trips or vacations, I don't know if 100-miles is going to cut it. Particularly as battery estimates tend to be fair-weather estimates, and the longer trips tend to be highway trips at speeds sub-optimal for efficiency.
Will people put up with stopping every sixty or seventy minutes for a 'swap'?
I know it seems silly to think about the annoyances of trips taken maybe a dozen times a year. But consumers are not always rational. In the end, 100 miles and recharging every hour may not wind up attracting more customers than the existing 40 to 50-mile range electrics.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- sethg 15y agoIsrael is one of the ideal places to test out this system, because the country is so small: 100 miles will take you from Ashkelon, the southernmost major city on the Israeli coast, to Haifa, the northernmost. And very few Israelis expect to drive their cars, electric or otherwise, on day trips across Egypt or Lebanon.
- 6ren 15y agoThey might not have a strong motive to improve - but if consumers are saving 30% pa, that will be enough to provide happiness for a while. Competition is the thing that's supposed to encourage improvement - if Better Place can actually make it work, competitors will presumably get funded. It's not just actual competitors, but also potential competitors. A danger then is an oligopoly (where competitors work in concert; a virtual monopoly. Adam Smith has a saying that men of the same trade seldom meet without a scheme to defraud the public being hatched). But they do have some motivation: more efficient batteries would use less electricity (cost) but give the same kilometers (revenue); fewer changeovers would increase consumer usage (more revenue), and make it attractive to the next segment of the population (more users) - and, perhaps especially, make it viable for larger cities/countries where a greater range is needed to attract even a sliver of early-adopters. NOTE: Battery tech does improve, but really slowly. It's the least of their problems. funfact: electric vehicles were actually in use about 100 years ago, and edison (for one) was involved in improving battery tech.