While Tesla basks in the afterglow of paying back its DoE loans nine years ahead of schedule, Israeli electric car infrastructure company Better Place has filed for bankruptcy:
Better Place aimed very high, trying to make real the vision of a world where depleted electric car batteries could be swapped rapidly for fully charged ones. The task apparently proved too difficult for the startup: After burning through about $850 million of private investor money, it couldn’t raise money anymore and had to file for bankruptcy. … Better Place’s bankruptcy could be the final nail in the coffin of battery swapping, as there aren’t many others doing this, and if it couldn’t be done with all the resources that they had, smaller startups probably won’t succeed either.
Todd Woody concludes that Better Place should have been “more like Tesla”:
Better Place’s business model depended on spending hundreds of millions of dollar building out its network before it could begin to sign up first paying customers. That turned out to be an extremely capital-intensive proposition. Each battery switch station cost about $500,000 and Better Place needed to deploy dozens, even in a small country like Israel. And once stations were built, the customers didn’t come. …
Tesla, on the other hand, is following consumer demand in scaling the manufacture of its Model S electric sports sedan and the build out of its network of Supercharger charging stations, which add 150 miles of range in 30 minutes to the already-long range car. While Tesla designed the Model S to be capable of battery swapping, the company believes the future lies in fixed-battery electric vehicles capable of going 200 miles to 300 miles (322 kilometers to 483 kilometers) on a charge and that will use a network of fast charging stations deployed on highways to make long-distance trips.
Joe Romm shrugs at the news:
Yes, lots of people put money into the company — but a lot of experts on alternative-fueled vehicles and electric cars had big doubts this business model made any sense.
The Dish 