(Source: Gas 2.0)

One of the biggest hurdles for market penetration for the Electric Vehicles (EV) is the charging times associated with the batteries in the vehicles. Some of these batteries take up to several hours (4hrs to 8hrs) for a full charge , a.k.a Top off, and continues to remain a big challenge for the manufacturers to convince their buyers. Looking at the existing fleet of vehicles in the market, some question the wisdom behind the EV charging investments. If you pulled up at a gas station along the way it takes roughly 5 minutes to “top off” or fill up your gas tak and get back on the road quickly. With the existing EVs in the market placethis is not possible, at least at this moment. That’s where Shai Agassi’s Better Place excelled with a marvellous idea. Why not just swap the batteries like you would do in a household device. And do it as quickly as you buy a burger at a drive through. Combining the two ideas results in what you can call the Battery Swap Station. For those who wondered aloud about the viability of a business model proposed by Project Better Place, the recent deployment of its Battery-Swap station in Israel should be worth taking note.

Image Courtesy: Better Place on Flickr

Batter Swap Infrastructure - Image Courtesy: Better Place on Flickr

Gas 2.0 notes the following:

Project Better Place’s Israeli facility released this video of the battery swapper in action, effectively “topping off” the electric car with a simple swipe of a card in about the same time it would take to top-off a conventional ICE car.  The stations themselves are designed to be modular in construction, and compatible with several different EVs – although they are presumably leaning heavily towards batteries powering Renault/Nissan’s EVs.

The Truth About Cars blog reports that 8 more Better Place battery-swap stations are currently in construction, and the company hopes to eventually have 40 similar stations operational throughout Israel.

Click here to learn more about the project.

Editor’s note: Until the battery technology is refined to the point where charging times are on par with the time it takes for filling up a gas tank in the conventional car, this approach seems prudent and better suited for rapid deployment.  Oh, on a related note – if this model were to be deployed in the US, I presume it would have a slight twist.  The stations will be designed to sell you a burger while you swap the batteries, which means you can see an integrated refueling station for the vehicle and the driver, just like how we have it now in the Gas Stations with convenience store options. Wouldn’t that be ironic to have a Better Place  Charging Station co-located with a burger joint like Burger King or McDonalds? Haha!  Oh,  come on.  I know you not heard many people say that: McDonalds is not a Better Place.

(Source: Business Week)

NewDealDesign and Better Place teamed up to create a car recharging tower called the Charge Spot, and won themselves an IDEA gold award

One day, recharging stations for electric cars might be much more common than gas stations. If NewDealDesign has its way, they won’t look at all the same, however. The San Francisco design shop has teamed up with e-car venture Better Place to create the Charge Spot, an electricity outlet that received the gold medal in 2009’s International Design Excellence Awards (IDEA a.k.a. Industrial Designers Society of America). The slender and sleek column looks a bit like a sidewalk traffic barrier with a blue plastic top. Amit calls it a “mini-tower of electric power.”

NewDealDesign, founded and financed by Gadi Amit, its president, borrowed from its experience with consumer-electronics clients such as Dell , Fujitsu, Nokia, and Palm to create the Charge Spot.

Better Place’s goal is to have these electricity outlets built wherever people might park their cars for long stretches—parking lots, garages, and streets. Motorists would plug one end of a heavy-duty extension cord into the top of the Charge Spot and the other into a port on their vehicles. Within six hours, their cars would be fully juiced and good to go. Shown below is an awesome cool video, courtesy of YouTube, demonstrating how the technology works)

The tower also houses digital electronics for recording charges and billing motorists’ accounts. The Charge Spot team, drawn from NewDealDesign’s staff of 12 designers, removed hinges and doors from the first prototypes, simplified the display screen, and changed some internal components, reducing cost to about one-tenth of earlier designs, says Paluska. Each spot can also charge two cars at once.

Better Place, established by Shai Agassi in Palo Alto, Calif., in 2007, is trying to create the infrastructure for battery-powered cars. It is also working with Renault-Nissan to design a new electric vehicle. First-generation recharging fixtures were patterned after gasoline pumps, with a power cord instead of a hose. NewDealDesign chose a different model: chargers for portable devices such as laptops, cell phones, and iPods.

“We want to make the electric vehicle a normal, widespread car, not just for the ‘crazy’ green guy,” says Amit, 46, who started NewDealDesign in 2000. Better Place launched the Charge Spot last December in Israel, where 900 of a planned 100,000 have been deployed in preparation for the upcoming launch of its electric vehicle.  Plans are afoot for  massive, worldwide deployment of these charging stations in many car-huggng cultures, including the US, Canada, Denmark, Japan, Austrlia.

Click here to read the entire article.

(Source: TED)

Forget about the hybrid auto — Shai Agassi says it’s electric cars or bust if we want to impact emissions. His company, Better Place, has a radical plan to take entire countries oil-free by 2020.

Just over a year ago, BusinessWeek ran a great piece aboutShai Agassi and his audacious plans to produce a mass market electric vehicle and thereby revolutionize the auto industry. So it was great to get an update from the former software entrepreneur turned zero emission transport guru on the main TED stage earlier today.

Business Week’s report on Mr. Agassi’s TED presentation offers this:  “Much of what Agassi had to say was familiar, but it was fascinating to hear how the Better Place project is scaling to places such as Australia and Hawaii (it started life in Israel, with the support of politician Shimon Peres.) The emergence of Car 2.0, as Agassi described it, entails an entirely new business model for car ownership, whereby drivers will pay for miles as they currently pay for minutes on a phone. And Agassi, who cut an imposing and definitive figure on stage, professed to be interested in only two figures: Zero, as in zero emissions; and infinity, as in this model should be available for every driver, worldwide.”

The quote from Wired Magainze nicely captures Mr. Agassi’s personality – Charismatic &  convincing. 

“Shai Agassi has only one car, no charging stations, and not a single customer—yet everyone who meets him already believes he can see the future.” – Wired

Here is Mr. Agassi’s presentation at TED.