The only mistake better place made was to go with Renault. Had they gone to any other brand other then French, it would have been far more successful.

Clearly, having a clever solution doesn't guarantee success. Better Place's battery-swap scheme is a way to deal with the range issue, but the underlying technology and cost issues are killing one electric car scheme after another. In the US, despite hundreds of millions in government loans, Fisker is nearing bankruptcy and is likely to be bought by a Chinese firm. A123, a battery manufacturer which also got a pile of government money, struggled because they intended to power the Chevy Volts, which are hardly selling. The Nissan Leaf didn't take off. Tesla may make a first profit (if you don't count the 500 million in government loans), but only sells a few thousand cars a quarter. (At over $60,000 each, I'm not surprised.) The only solutions still deemed viable are hybrids, partly thanks to tax subsidies. Meanwhile, more clean diesel cars are coming (I'm waiting to check out the Mazda 6 diesel). In a few years we may transition to natural gas. Electric cars of the early 21st century may end up like those of the early 20th - as historic footnotes.

The business strategy of a Better Place was to monopolize on the idea of them owning your battery. Of course, in order to be profitable the price you pay for leasing their battery increases over time even though battery technology gets better and cheaper over time. It was a bad idea from the get go. A better idea would have been to have owned the technology of a better battery; to be what Android is to smartphones. All manufacturers would have to pay a royalty payment to the owner of the IP and all manufacturers would compete with each other. as a result, the consumer wins. Instead of owning the battery changing stations outright, it would have been a better idea to lease the swap equipment to existing gas stations. They would gladly dedicate a section for EV's if they saw it was profitable. In short, A Better Place is the textbook example of what happens when a greedy, shortsighted entrepreneur thinks he's smarter than a visionary, altruistic engineer.

Just like Moore's Law, batteries improve every year and the BP model becomes less relevant as more EVs are on the road with more fast-charging stations being built every year. It's still a wonderful idea to encourage more drivers to rely on EVs.

not only was better greedy on the technology end, but their subscription scheme was designed to maximize profit, to the detriment of their customers. first of all, the subscription packages were too big for the typical israeli driver, who doesn't drive 500 km a week. but it was intended to lock up all of the recharging market. even if it might be convenient to recharge at home, the subscription was already paid for, so it would be foolish to spend more from your household electricity bill. and the same idea would destroy competition from non-better place charging stations: a driver with a subscription wouldn't recharge at another station, no matter how competitive their price, because that would cost more than his/her prepaid charges. which leaves no room for others to create an "industry", rather than just a monopoly. greed killed the goose that laid the golden egg.

Moore's law suggests that the number of transistors or ICs doubles approximately every two years. Indeed, since I started working with computers, speeds have gone up from MHz to GHz as the number of circuits has skyrocketed. That law also seems to apply to memory density, whether Disk or RAM. Batteries, unfortunately, haven't followed a similar trajectory. There's been no doubling of energy density every two years - not even close. There certainly have been improvements, usually by jiggering the materials used - going from nickel-cadmium to lithium-ion, for example - but the underlying chemistry precludes the kind of advances many have sought. Look at it this way. If the energy density of batteries had indeed advanced according to Moore's Law you'd be running your house on a pair of AAs.

eventually it will get there . it has to . anything that is ground breaking takes time and money .