

Better Place to file for bankruptcy - talhof8
http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2013/05/24/exclusive-better-place-to-file-for-bankruptcy/?iid=HP_River

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bulltale
My initial reaction is that this is a turning point in electric car
technology. If there was one company suited to take the role in battery
swapping like Tesla did for electric cars in general, it was Better Place.
With them gone, and battery technology rapidly improving, battery swapping for
consumer cars may never take off.

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imrehg
Just finished reading [Wide Lens][1] about innovation of ecosystems, why
things can fail even if you do everything right if you ignore the ecosystems.
One of their main example for the complete system, for a company which did
thing right, was Better Place. I was just thinking to compare the Tesla model
with Better Place. Well, I still think that the book is very insightful, just
there's more to the story than it was written at that time...

[1]: [http://www.amazon.com/The-Wide-Lens-Strategy-
Innovation/dp/1...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Wide-Lens-Strategy-
Innovation/dp/1591844606) "Wide Lens on Amazon"

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ippisl
I think the main reason better place failed wasn't due to ecosystem risk. The
product was just too expensive hence with little value to price and came with
a pretty high risk.

All those were caused by limits of current technology, and by the need to sell
in small countries(limited high end market) where charging networks could be
built.

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brianbreslin
I wasn't familiar with Better Place, but the headline reads as though it would
be an article outlining WHERE one should file for bankruptcy for strategic
reasons.

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eliben
It's somewhat sad. I really hope Better Place's demise happens because
battery-swapping lost to just-keep-the-battery-in-the-car-and-charge-it
strategy; not because oil-is-still-more-economical. :-/

But seriously, how will we ever be able to drive truly long distances with
EVs? Super-charger stations that recharge batteries in a very short time?

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marvin
I'm pretty sure that heavily parallel charging of batteries made up of smaller
battery cells in special supercharging stations will be the solution, combined
with charging at home when you can afford to wait eight hours for charging the
battery slowly.

At the moment this is just a question of existing battery technology improving
enough. Right now we are in the region where this is just borderline feasible,
but in five years I'm pretty sure it will seem like a no-brainer. Tesla Motors
is currently building supercharging stations all over the US, and it remains
to be seen whether their approach will work. Note that they are a private
company with no current government involvement, and we are now a few years
into the future from when Better Place started rolling out their technology.
Timing is everything in this game - the obvious strategy will seem like a bad
idea until suddenly it isn't.

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eliben
Hmm, according to <http://www.teslamotors.com/supercharger> Tesla now promises
to charge 150 miles of range worth of battery in 30 minutes. This isn't bad,
though of course far from perfect. But yes, parallel charging of sub-batteries
sounds like a good idea, one I was also thinking about at some point. It
definitely sounds like (and I hope it's no more than) an engineering problem
at this point.

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kfk
Better Place always seemed to me like a marketing stunt. I am really not that
surprised this happened. The idea, although, is still interesting. I guess
another lesson of the big difference there is between a good idea and a
successful implementation.

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guimarin
it was. the ceo stole the idea from a small-time silicon valley inventor,
while said inventor was soliciting him for money. thus it was never in the US
or EU where patents applied.

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ippisl
Interesting, got any links?

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s3curityx
Aside from the huge money lost the investors have, my heart goes to the ~1000
car owners that are now stuck. I hope that there will be some money left to
compensate them for being true early adopters and believers.

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anxx
I am not sad for these particular investors, because they could've become very
rich if it had taken off. With great chance for cash comes great risk of
losing it and they knew it. I do feel for the early adopters, though; I hope
Better Place finds some money to compensate them.

For future investors, Better Place will be a reminder not to invest in ideas
that are too disruptive, even if the founder and the team seems right for the
job. The companies that might never be due to this precedent is the real loss,
I think.

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nknighthb
Battery-swapping as a thing for the general public's use of electric vehicles
always struck me as just stupid. It works against an important advantage of
EVs (no more detours to gas stations), requires standardization of a nascent
product space (does that _ever_ work?), adds costs (at the very least, that
machinery must be maintained), and confers no advantage at all for the vast
majority of car use cases.

The general public simply does not take long road trips frequently enough for
a full network of battery-swap stations to be viable.

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JoeAltmaier
I guess standardization worked pretty good for automobiles, trains, planes,
telephone, electric power, radio, heck even the internet.

For instance an industry charging standard could take off easily. I think
Better Place just guessed wrong.

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nknighthb
I think you fundamentally misunderstood my comment. Either that, or you
fundamentally misunderstand every single product space you mention.
Standardization of _nascent_ product spaces doesn't work at all. Most of the
products you mention _still_ aren't really standardized decades or even
centuries after their invention, and/or have competing standards.

