
The Spectacular Failure Of Better Place - uladzislau
http://www.fastcompany.com/3028159/a-broken-place-better-place/?
======
brc
There is no doubt in my mind that the 'clean tech' investment bubble is as
popped as the dotcom bubble, albeit for different reasons, but with the same
refrain. Pets.com and better place will end up as poster children for
speculative bubbles in which large amounts of money are thrown at business
plans with little research and absolutely no product.

People seem to like comparing themslevs to Steve jobs, being on the worlds
stage, releasing products to a stunned audience. But they just want to skip to
that part and not go through the whole starting a company in the garage thing.

The comparisons between tesla and bp could not be more stark. One took
investment carefully, consistently only enlarging scope when success was
already seen with the team and the product. The other attempted to reinvent
the world, seemingly with no real product and a vey vague, shifting plan.

Imagine how long that billion dollars could have lasted had it been invested
sensibly. They might be a success in Israel now and accepting favorable offers
from other car manufacturers and governments. Now it's just another cautionary
tale in the long list of people who lost their shirts trying to sell electric
cars.

~~~
danso
I think the dressing-like-Steve-Jobs is a sure sign of failure. It evinces the
belief that appearance and charisma is what drives people to build (and buy) a
product. Well, yes, it's reportedly true that Jobs had that effect. But in his
early stages, he also had Woz, someone as one-of-a-kind as he is, and in later
years, attracted the kind of engineers and designers who could survive the
Kool-Aid drinking. For someone to think that Jobs did it on pure gusto and
dreams alone, and even worse, to assume such a thing is a formula that can be
replicated and regurgitated...that's not a great sign of leadership.

And also, if you really were a visionary who an idea that, in many ways, is
even bigger than Apple...why the f __* would you settle for being the "Steve
Jobs of electric cars?" The pop-psychologist in me wants to believe that such
a visionary would rather make his/her own distinctive stylistic mark.

~~~
soneca
Also, Steve Jobs would go to the stage when his new idea had become a complete
product! He would go on stage to show it, not pitch it!

He would spend a few years without telling no outsider what he and his team
were up to, then when they proved for themselves that it works (including all
the industrial capacity and logistics to deliver it in place), _then_ he would
use his charisma to sell it. He sold products, not ideas (or ideals).

~~~
aswanson
I cant stop laughing at the Dressing-as-Steve antisignal. I wonder if there
are any startups out there pitching vcs in black turtlenecks.

------
rdl
I suspect BP would have actually worked (rather, been made to "work") during
the socialist lost decade(s) in Israel. The national security advantage of not
needing oil probably would have led to a huge tax on either petrol cars or
fuel, combined with subsidy. Consumers could have been forced to accept one
model of kind of mediocre car instead of the full range of options today.

~~~
pron
"... during the socialist lost decade(s) in Israel"

I wouldn't call them "lost decades". Many of us sorely miss those years;
though, to be honest, it's hard to separate fact from nostalgia.

------
tomaskazemekas
The trajectory of Better Place and the character of the founder Shai Agassi is
almost analogous with another recent super failure of a promising Brazilian
oil venture OGX Petróleo e Gás and its founder Eike Batista [1].

It is like a case of bubble cycle representation in a singe investment
venture.

The pattern here is that the impressive early success of a charismatic founder
is accepted as a promising billion dollar venture by some prominent investors.
At this point the visionary founder gets lost in positive feedback loop and
looses touch with reality. Eventually the the bubble bursts and the business
goes under.

[1] Batista Loses $15 Billion as Brazil Awakes From Dream.
[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-12/batista-
loses-15-bi...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-12/batista-
loses-15-billion-as-brazil-awakes-from-dream.html)

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therealarmen
Better Place failed because swappable batteries don't make sense. The
technology is too complex and it would have required a massive leap of faith
amongst automakers to adopt the standard from an startup, even one as well-
funded as Better Place.

I worked in the electric vehicle industry for 4 years, and it was clear early
on that the market was moving towards permanent battery storage (not unlike
smartphones) with intermittent charging taking place at public locations.
Today, the vast majority of EV charging takes place at home.

Better Place management did not to listen to the market and the company
suffered greatly as a result. If they would have pivoted to building recharge
stations or charging networks they just may have had a chance to succeed.

~~~
tdicola
"Better Place failed because swappable batteries don't make sense." Did we
read the same article? It seemed pretty clear there were incredible management
missteps like burning $500k/day with only a few hundred cars being sold or the
CEO going excommunicado for months that destroyed the company. Even with the
right tech it sounds like they were setup for failure.

------
stuhood
And they say that hardware startups are hard. Hardware startups that require
hundreds of custom, million dollar station installs, AND cooperation from a
significant fraction of car manufacturers... are the hardest.

The Tesla Superchargers cost about $20k each to install, which is low enough
that they didn't need anyone else's cooperation to cover the US.

~~~
jesusmichael
Even if Telsa covers the earth in superchargers... it doesn't matter unless
other cars are using the same tech... which they are not.

And if every 200 miles I have to sit for 30 mins... what? What if the stall
are all full? I have to sit for an hour? No even on its best day was that a
good idea...

~~~
scatters
If you aren't taking a 30 minute break every 3-4 hours then I really don't
want to be on the same road as you.

~~~
jessaustin
You might want to reconsider driving in the USA. b^)

------
jpeg_hero
These articles are missing the "Better Place Super Yacht"

[http://www.superyachts.com/sail-yacht-8657/better-
place.htm](http://www.superyachts.com/sail-yacht-8657/better-place.htm)

Maybe not the most efficient marketing dollars...

~~~
FD3SA
Wow, do a lot of luxury yachts have sails? I was under the impression the term
"yacht" wasn't really applicable, but this thing seems like a real sail boat.

All that luxury glassware wouldn't hold up too well if you catch a bit too
much wind on a tack.

~~~
jrochkind1
Sure, yacht pretty much just means a fancy recreational boat, and has existed
as a word since when most of them were wind-powered, some still are.

------
dcre
I actually saw a sort of showroom of theirs in Israel a few years ago,
complete with a track where they'd take you around in one of the cars. It all
sounded good, but at one point they put us in this very fancy video auditorium
and showed us a 10- or 15-minute marketing film that I distinctly remember was
totally devoid of content.

~~~
mchafkin
Did you see the Shai Agassi hologram?

~~~
dcre
Ha, I don't think I did.

------
beachstartup
i saw shai agassi speak for about 30 minutes in a TED talk and at the end of
it, i still had absolutely no idea what his company actually did.

~~~
mchafkin
the crazy thing is most people who heard that talk seemed quite taken --
despite the outrageousness of the whole thing (for instance, the comparison to
EVs and the end of slavery)

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netcan
Better Place Failed.

We have a tendency to look at success and failure stories and pick out some
storyline that suits us. Here we have a lot to choose from: boiling oceans,
CEO god complexes, too much money, wrong business model, the charging stations
business model, etc. etc.

I think its useful to read accounts of success and failure analyze them and
such. But extracting too many lessons might be as bad as too few.

I don't think there was anything inevitable about Better Place's failure. I
don't think there was (is?) anything inevitable about Tesla's success. I do
think that it is inevitable that some of these will fail.

Lets learn, but not to much.

------
jere
>The GM executives were nonplussed. "If it's free, why don't you just swap the
car instead of the battery?" one asked.

Burn. It seems like this guy was more delusional than Jobs at his worst.

------
nostromo
Why did they spend so much time and money addressing the limited range of
electric cars... in Israel. A country smaller than New Jersey.

It seems like his initial market had little need for his one differentiating
feature.

I can't help but wonder if this Onion Talk was modeled after Better Place
after reading the article:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkGMY63FF3Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkGMY63FF3Q)

~~~
GabrielF00
Focusing on the Israeli market made a certain amount of sense. They positioned
this as a sort of a patriotic project that would be transformative for a small
country and they had the country's top leadership involved from the beginning.
They were probably in a much better position to get what they wanted from
government and local businesses than they would have been in the US. It's also
a lot easier to build enough charging stations to cover any place a customer
wants to go if your target country is very small.

~~~
jrochkind1
Focusing on the Israeli market probably makes a lot of business sense, for the
reasons you say. Parent commenter's point is that once you've made that
(sensible) choice, there's no need, for that market, to focus on increasing
the range between charges, because that market doesn't need increased range,
that's not what will help you succeed in that market.

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rikf
I think there are two many lessons that can be learnt from this story.

1\. Stay focussed. 2\. Keep your team as small as possible.

~~~
nostromo
3\. Ship

~~~
nir
They did ship. It's not that rare to see their cars driving around Israel.
From what I've heard, owners loved them - less so now, obviously.

I think BP burnt through their money too quickly, and ran out of resources
(and investor patience) just as they were starting to get some traction.

------
alexqgb
"The one group of people Agassi seemed in no hurry to hire were actual
managers with car-industry or infrastructure-building expertise. 'We had no
automotive experts,' explains one person familiar with the inner workings of
the company. 'Nobody who'd done a car in their life.'"

That's quite an oversight.

------
kirk21
Too much too early. Sad.

------
andyl
Car startups are so hard - more respect for Tesla.

~~~
jesusmichael
not if they work...

------
oznathan
The real reason is because Shai Agassi, a 0.001 percentile guy, was beaten by
Elon Musk, a 0.0000001 percentile guy.

