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“The future of the electric car”

Why aren’t we seeing more electric cars out there? despite the many answers for this question, the problem relies mainly on 2 facts: The low range of batteries compared to gas and the lack of a network of charging stations to backup a revolution in the transportation means of our planet. One company is set to change the game and provide a system that can make electric cars (and mopeds =)) as popular as mobile phones. This is what last month’s Wired Magazine and the story written by Daniel Roth tells us.

Wired Magazine - September 2008

The Story is about the plans of Shai Agassi, former Head of Product at SAP, now founder of Better Place, and his plans to set up network of charging stations to power the future of human transportation.

Better Place’s strategy is a “mashup of the automotive and mobile phone industries”. Their plan is to provide the batteries to all electric cars, along with a network of smart charge posts. Drivers would be able to plugin anywhere, anytime, and to subscribe to different plans: unlimited miles, a specific maximum of miles each month or “pay on the go”. Just like the phone industry, costumers would be able to by the car from the operator and maybe even get the car for free, “the profit would be made by selling electricity-The minutes.”

Shai Agassi an his team have come up with an operating system, that recognizes the user as he comes to a charging station, buys electricity from the local electricity grid and that when the user has no time charge up his battery, he can swap for a new battery, without extra cost-The operator would own the battery.

Now, let’s hope that Agassi’s plan come to really as it moves forward. He has already got Israel and Denmark to test his vision on the near future.

We wish all the success to Better Place and hope to be part of this revolution. Our e.mopeds are not ready but are most definetly looking forward for this.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, October 12th, 2008 at 6:12 pm and is filed under Batteries, Industry Watch. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

3 Responses to ““The future of the electric car””

  1. November 4th, 2008 at 6:40 pm

    piers says:

    Hey, I saw this today somewhere else and thought I would check your site because I found quite a good article abotu converting an mx bike into electric:
    http://evdrive.com/Emoto_project/moto_project.html
    KTM also announced an electric enduro bike which i did a test of a month ago and was totally amazed at. Was soo good.
    hope your well…

  2. November 7th, 2008 at 8:00 pm

    Henrique Monnerat says:

    Hey Piers!! great link man! so interesting to see their work. It was funny to see that they seem to build their own battery packs, just like when you are doing with professional radio controlled cars.

    They are already thinking of regenerative braking, probably using the motor magnetic field generate electricity and drag to slow down.

    From what I understood, they are facing some issues with the sensibility of the throttle, which gives 100% power right of the start, also unexpectedly when you bump or tip the throttle…that’s a major issue. The electric motor doesn’t make any sound, and because there is no clutch, there are great chances to accidentally hitting “the gas” when you are of the bike. Anyway, I think that is in general a good design challenge also.

    They are using electronics from BMS, which I didn’t know before. (http://liionbms.com)

    Through their website I also found out about the EVForum which is a forum for discussion on electric vehicles with lots of infos. (http://www.evalbum.com/)

    Great link man, thanks a lot!

    put some pictures up of you testing the KTM electric motorcycle!

  3. April 14th, 2009 at 1:25 am

    Henrique Monnerat says:

    Shai Agassi’s Talk in TED 2009 has just been published:

    http://www.betterplace.com/press-room/videos-detail/shai-agassi-at-ted-2009/

    In his words, the background of Better Place and why is it relevant to today’s climate dilemma.