JERUSALEM (AP) — It was an audacious idea that came to symbolize Israel’s self-described status as “Start-Up Nation,” a company that believed it could replace most gasoline-powered cars with electric vehicles and reduce the world’s reliance on oil — and all within a few years.
But it all came crashing down.
The company, Better Place, started out as a source of pride and a symbol of Israel’s status as a global high-tech power, but it suffered from a local brand of hubris and overreach. On Sunday, it announced plans to liquidate after burning through almost a billion dollars and failing to sell its silent fleet of French-made sedans to a skeptical public.
“This is a very sad day for all of us. We stand by the original vision as formulated by Shai Agassi of creating a green alternative that would lessen our dependence on highly polluting transportation technologies,” the company said. “Unfortunately, the path to realizing that vision was difficult, complex and littered with obstacles, not all of which we were able to overcome.”
…
Agassi, 45, believed that in an era of global warming and rising oil prices, environmentally friendly electric cars could be the wave of the future, if only a way could be found to overcome the limited range of their batteries.
Full story here: http://www.ecnmag.com/news/2013/05/trailblazing-israeli-electric-car-company-close
Per T says:
May 29, 2013 at 1:25 am
Analogous, telephones should be superior to mobile phones
=============
the mobile phone equivalent of the electric car:
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-TSoLA-VJSKU/Tl-nJ10JO9I/AAAAAAAAAO0/bu6sKEZlsiA/s1600/first+car+phone.jpg
One could attach a long extension cord to the electric car and avoid the battery problem. Or governments could require that power companies install high voltage AC power lines under all the main roads and electric cars could automatically recharge as they drive using induced current from the road. This would get rid of the unsightly overhead power-lines at the same time. A win win.
Enterprising commuters could install batteries in their cars and use these to power their homes. As more “free” charging stations are installed in cities to encourage electric cars, expect more consumers to take advantage of this. Drive your Tesla down to the free charge station, recharge then drive home to keep the house running for the night for free. Next morning drive back to the recharge station. No more monthly surprise from Con-ed.
In Canada there is a joke. We could have had US technology, French cuisine and British culture. Instead we got British food, French technology and US culture. Renault + electric? Really? Talk about the kiss of death.
Not sure why so many AGW sceptics are against electric cars. I don’t give a —– about carbon dioxide emissions, but I would like to have a super-quiet, energy efficient vehicle. It appears to be very possible, even easy, just too expensive.
The technology situation looks more to me like giant flat screen TVs, where an early commercial version was a 40-inch Philips for $10k in 2002, than like nuclear fusion energy, where an early commercial version lived in the imaginations of science fiction writers of the 1980s.
Lighen up.
The hell with this electric car nonsense. I’m working on a car that runs on force of will and good intentions. I’m trying to find a way to harness all the energy involved with sitting in this car saying, “I think it’ll work, I think it’ll work, I think it’ll work,” but I haven’t quite gotten there yet. Maybe if I can get some investors…ok, scrap that…try this; coerce some taxpayers to invest, big time, in it well then maybe, “It’ll work, it’ll work, it’ll work.”
KevinM says:
May 29, 2013 at 7:24 am
Not sure why so many AGW sceptics are against electric cars.
That’s easy. We’re not against them per se, just being forced to subsidize them. If they are so great, people should be happy to pay the full market price for them. Guess what, though; even when subsidized, people don’t want them. Funny that.
arthur4563 says:
May 28, 2013 at 2:21 pm
Electric cars are intrinsically superior to gas powered jobs in every way, EXCEPT for the high price and slow recharge speed of batteries.
_______________________________________________
Price & rapidity of fueling would be two BIG factors in the success of a vehicle, no? Everytime there is a post on WUWT about an EV outfit going belly-up (which is not infrequent). we always get a few fan boys ballyhooing about how great EV’s are in the face of the obvious fact that the EV is not delivering what the car driving public wants. The above statement about the intrynsic superiority of the EV is one of the most ridiculous statements that I’ve ever heard. EV’s are out performed by internal combustion engined cars in every way imagineable. The best an EV can hope for is to approach the performance of an ICE car at greatly reduced utility and much greater cost. To be fair an EV shouldn’t even be lined up against a state of the art ICE car. It’s too cruel of a beat down.
Arthur has so much faulty info in his original post It all cannot even be addressed. I love how these EV guys hold Tesla up as the gold standard of the EV. The First Tesla kit car roadster was not impressive or practical. I expect close to the same from the over-hyped new model. Tesla is only finacially ‘viable’ due to transfer payments from real car mfr’s and subsidies.
AFAIC, If Israel can’t do it, it can’t be done …
This failed in Israel, a country so small you could drive from one side to the other and back on one charge.
First of all, we’re not against electric cars. We’re against being forced to pay for expensive toys for the rich.
Second, who doesn’t want a super-quiets, energy efficient vehicle? Go build one. But it has to be affordable without price supports, subsidies or other tax-payer dollars.
When flat-screen TVs came out, nobody asked the taxpayer to send a check to Phillips to underwrite the purchase. People bought them of their own free will, with their own money. However, electric cars are nothing like flat-screen TVs because flat-screens worked. Electric cars don’t. The energy density of car batteries is nowhere near the energy density of a gallon of gas.
Electric cars are a lot like nuclear fusion power plants because nobody has yet to build a practical, successful commercial model. Except people have been working on electric cars for over a century, but commercial nuclear fusion plants have never made it off the drawing board.
Pull your head out.
HR May 28th 2:15; Richards in Vancouver and others discussing Jaguar:
Wilcox Limousines (limousines.co.uk) coach-build the Jaguar Hearse and Hearsette.
Jaguar (jaguar.co.uk) make the XF Sportbrake, a fine estate car (Station Wagon). Wish I could afford one.
EV owners also get to opt out on paying their share of maintenance/improvements of roadways and bridges. Yeah, that’s fair.
Lest we forget – the chicken sh*t powered car; http://grist.org/list/this-guy-invented-a-manure-powered-car-in-1971/
During WW2 I recall cars that had been converted to run on town gas which simply had a big bag of gas on the roof. Refuelling no problem, just hook up to your cooker.
How to solve the electric car battery problem: Easy! Just get a trailer and tow a generator behind you.
“Israel is such a small, almost landlocked country, that an electric with a driving range of roughly 175 miles is probably all you’ll need. Ditto for Denmark and Hawaii.”
Ever cross the Negev Desert in summer without AC? Or take a run across Jutland in winter without heating? Or drive up a Hawaii volcano?
From CodeTech on May 29, 2013 at 2:41 am:
Some day I should get a better sleep pattern than “upright until falling over”, might improve my late night commenting.
But by mere exterior appearance, would you know the powertrain on your SRT4 is different than a base Dodge Caliber?
It’s tricky enough getting an electric motor that competes with gasoline, electric “cheats” on the HP and torque by having much higher motor RPM’s then gearing it down to output range. You couldn’t do direct blade-on-motor shaft like on a gas lawnmower, without a much heavier extension cord going to a commercial-grade locking connector, the amperage needed would be much higher.
For trying to make do with the trickles from a battery, under the cowling it could be like a Dyson vacuum, DC servo motor with variable frequency control, all dedicated to not using a single erg more than necessary.
And that costs money. $600 is on the high side, but could be justifiable with a good lithium or metal hydride battery.
Not that I’d ever spend that much, of course. I’ve seen the DIY examples of putting a battery and inverter on a used plug-in electric, cheap enough to do, I was considering it. Now the rechargables, using common-enough batteries freely available, are at attractive prices, down to on par with gasoline models. So why not?
In other news from the dying electric car field, the mostly moribund Fisker Karma may be rescued from the ash heap in a quite ironic manner. Bob Lutz, former big time Detroit executive including a stint as the head of GM, is now a principal in a company that offers Karma owners drivetrain conversions from the eco-friendly Fisker setup to a supercharged V-8 from a Cadillac CTS-V, which is a detuned version of the LS-9 that powers the Corvette ZR-1. The “start-up” has reportedly been swamped with orders for the “Destino” and Lutz is now rumored to be in negotiations to acquire the remains of the bankrupt Fisker, presumably to ensure on ongoing supply of rolling chassis for his conversion operation, although they could probably go for quite a while buying up slightly used Karmas from owners who fear keeping highly complicated autos when no company remains to address any problems that might arise.
Tesla only sells a car because of massive subsidies. 0s of thousands of $s per car. Put it into a capitalist market and it will be bust within a week.
tty says:
May 29, 2013 at 12:40 pm
“Israel is such a small, almost landlocked country, that an electric with a driving range of roughly 175 miles is probably all you’ll need. Ditto for Denmark and Hawaii.”
The problem is that you would never get anywhere near 175miles even 175Kms would be a problem and then you have to find a charging point in the desert and sit in the 100° sun for 6 hrs.
THEY ARE CRAP !!!! only idoits and californians buy electric cars.
One of the many bewildering things about press coverage of these issues, is that when ‘low carbon cars’, or ‘zero carbon cars’, or ‘clean electric cars’ are discussed, there is very rarely any mention of the question of where the electricity comes from in the first place. The question is obvious and important to readers and contributors here, but in the MSM it is rarely raised.
The Daily Telegraph (28th May 2013, B8) business section has another slightly different example. The article is called ‘fuelling the dream of clean cars’. It is about a company called Cella Energy, which is trying to develop technologies to allow cars to run on hydrogen. The article starts:
“In less than five years, your new car could be powered by a high-pressure tank of hydrogen rather than petrol.
This is what the big carmakers are driving at as they seek to produce vehicles with low or no carbon emissions…”
Later in the article we are told:
“The company’s early fundraising efforts were helped by winning Shell’s Springboard award for low carbon business ideas”.
All of which is fine, and interesting, and perhaps the technology has a future.
But, But – there is no consideration given, anywhere in the article (and it is quite a long article, by Amy Wilson), to the question of where the hydrogen is going to come from.
Blade above, in relation to the ‘Better Place’ car, refers to ‘relocating the “highly polluting” energy production to a power plant upstream ( and increasing net energy use in the process)’. The ‘clean hydrogen’ car is just another example of this. These things are not difficult to understand or to express. Why are they almost never discussed or raised in the mainstream media?
Electric cars is a fine idea, with some improvements, of course.
1. You need a backup gasoline engine to charge batteries, range can be improved greatly this way.
2. Find a way to power wheels directly from gasoline engine when it is on to decrease conversion losses.
3. Decrease battery size to save weight. One for startup, headlights, music and such is quite sufficient.
4. Get rid of electric motors, dead weight in this config anyway.
There, fixed.
I’ve now seen Better Place called an electric car company and a battery company. as a
headline for this story. It is neither, but then again, there really isn’t name for this type of company and, considering its fate, I don’t think we need to make up one.
Very good point. I have read some articles lately where governments are considering applying a direct tax on these greenies to cover that little oversight. Naturally the greenies are apoplectic, stunned and offended. But such a response from them is understandable because most of them (not Anthony of course) are dumb enough to believe that the price of a gallon of gas gets sent to the big oil companies to line their overflowing wallets, when in fact only a small part of the cost of a gallon of gas goes there. Ah well, these are the same people who believe they are using “Electric” cars in the first place and that electricity grows on trees, or well, magically comes out of wall sockets.
One other bad thing about so-called “Electric” cars is often cited as a positive. It is something that is seldom discussed, and never in the context of a negative. That bad thing is the fact that they are quiet. Yes, I said it. You see, coming from urban NYC and later rural upstate, I can tell you that we have the sound of a car and its engine and other assorted racket built-in to our daily ambient audio consumption. Whether crossing a Manhattan street or a lonely upstate road it is instinctual to listen without realizing it and this is automatic process is now a Darwinian attribute separating the wheat from the chaff.
The point is this … Considering that the entire purpose of green technology is lower CO2 emissions to thwart some far-off future with rising seas and thermometers which will presumably lead to some hypothetical dead person who wouldn’t be dead if we would just turn the civilized world upside down and de-industrialize. So let’s say they’re right and some hypothetical future death would be prevented (even ignoring the offset of new deaths from cold for the sake of argument).
The logical problem is that there will be guaranteed current deaths tossed onto the altar of greenism by simply using the “Electric” car alternative. Inattentive children and hard-of-hearing people will be first to go as they merrily cross a road while a sleek and quiet “Electric” car takes them out like grazing deer. And speaking of deer there will even more cases of them being hit by these cars also with an associated increase of driver deaths. This is not hypothetical at all. We’ve all had close calls already on golf courses, or from a quiet auto or bus (compared to the normal louder ones) or from a bicycle or any number of things that suddenly appear in our path (cue the bus scene from Final Destination). Our ability to listen is a prime line of defense we take for granted.
I’ve thought about this a lot and every time I am in traffic it gets reinforced. For those that pooh-pooh such a problem, answer me this … Would you drive or walk the streets today wearing your iPod? Or having the car radio too loud? Would you expect a problem if your kids did it? It is already happening today with our existing loud cars by careless people doing exactly those things and we chalk that up to social Darwinism. The point is that with quiet “Electric” cars the iPod or headphones are a moot point. Now here’s the really harsh question about a world full of quiet “Electric” vehicles … Just how many dead kids would it take to consider this a problem? How many can be safely sacrificed before one does a cost-benefit analysis?
Personally I would expect a technological solution probably along the lines of equipping them with artificial sound (sorry, no more quiet cars) or in the future automatic sounds created in response to proximity radar alerts ( this is kinda like doping gas with a smell so that we can detect a leak, which we do today ). What bothers me is that so many people immediately chalk the quietness up as a positive rather than a guaranteed negative.
Now to those that immediately launch into the “everyone here is against electric cars blah blah”, it is not so. There are fine uses for anything and I believe in the right tool for the job. So don’t shoot the messenger here, just ponder the question. If guaranteed deaths are acceptable in the name of progress then be honest enough to take the phony green arguments of preventing future deaths right off the table.
Israel and hubris are often used in the same sentence.
Where is Tesla’s car: In 1936, in front of hundreds of press, authorities Tesla had a 75hp “electric” motor installed in a car – went to the corner hardware store and bought some vaccumn tubes, wires and electrial parts – assembled them in a shoebox size container – placed it on the front seat – ran two wires through the firewall to the box – attached the wires to two small metal rods protruding – pushed them down and said “now we have power”. He ran the car for a week at up to 90mph on “nothing” but that box. Tesla said the power came from the sun and the magnetic field of the earth – day or night this small box can run your car or house, near forever on this free power. The press, under pressure from its owners, Standard Oil/Rockefeller and other “affected” electrical and car company’s, wrote that Tesla was in league with the devil, that it was all a hoax. Tesla took his invention or discovery and retired it into his files – which are locked up by the Government to this day.