Friends:

The Time Has Come :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmytmG9ZE2M

We need BetterPlace all over the world !

Olivier

Great and congratulations. This is an example for many companies to be more open.
My question is how Better Place will operate in Israel, since most car importers here do not like the idea of an electric car.
They only thionk about their own pocket and not what the consumer is looking for.
How will this be tackled by BP?

Hi, It's great to see BP starting a new blog. I have a question about the current Better Place forum. It appears that no company representatives ever visit the site or try to answer any of the pressing questions. For example, there has been a thread dedicated to specific common questions that keep getting asked around the Internet. No response yet. I look forward to a new era of transparency and building of the fan base to help spread the BP word.

Here are the pressing, yet unanswered questions:



Nagging questions for BP as they move closer to world dominancePosted by EVHappy on May 21, 2009 at 6:54pm in General Discussion

1) What is the plan for cold climates like Canada? Anyone that has ever lived in a cold and snowy climate has had the experience of all that snow, ice and crud accumulating under the chassis. Is there some form of pre-cleaning before a battery swap? A heat lamp, hot water spray, video camera that alerts the operator that there might be a problem, etc? How about a heating element on the inside of the skid plate? The element could start to heat up about 15 minutes before a scheduled swap (confirmed by the driver).

2) What is the plan for testing battery packs and returning sub-standard packs back to a central repair station? Is there a special truck that is like a moving swap-station? It can go to the next swap-station on it’s route, pick up any packs that need repair and replace them with reconditioned units. This truck could be fully automated and would improve the efficiency and cool factor by a great deal.

3) What are the plans for recycling and for using sub-standard units for stationary electrical energy storage? A centrally managed operation would be far more efficient than having the car’s owner go though this inconvenience.

4) What about auto theft? What are the precautions for safeguarding the valuable battery pack? During an energy crisis, people will steal just about anything (gas, copper wire, etc.). How can we make the battery pack very hard to steal? How do we prevent the stolen packs and cells from becoming a valuable item in an underground market? Are individual cell-tags going to be used?

5) What if something goes wrong with the swap? Let’s say the pack is stuck, a latch is not engaged, ice is getting in the way, etc.? How can an operator get under the vehicle and help things out? The demo swap-station shows very little room for a human to get in there.

6) What is the next milestone? Are there any plans to keep your fans more up-to-date on things? The swap-station demo was fantastic, when can we expect to be dazzled again? :)

7) When I charge at home do I get double charged? How is BP going to take into account that the home charger is going to use electricity that was paid for by the BP member. It would be like a double charge. I'm sure they have addressed this but it would be nice to hear the details.

8) Swapping out a partially full pack. What if I swap out a pack that was only 50% full? Many people have range anxiety and don't want to get too low on the meter. Thus, if they see a swap station they might just swing by for a quick swap. That would increase the amount of swaps and thus add to BP's costs. Now Shai has already said that the swap was free and if you go to the swap-station more than a typical driver goes to the gas station you would get paid back for the inconvenience. Perhaps that should be adjusted to take into account partial swaps. We wouldn't want people going to the swap-station everyday (maybe it's on their way to work) just to get a refund. If they swap 100 times but only registered 25 full capacity swaps then that should be accounted for. Also, related to the double charge, people would do a swap so they do not get double charged at home and to also get a refund. We don’t want to motivate people to go running to the swap-station, do we? ;)

Great questions!  As mentioned in this post, we have been logging questions posed by the community, and we will use the blog as a platform to address many of them.  Some of the questions you raised cannot be addressed here (e.g., anything dealing with costs, plans, timing, etc., which are market-specific or currently confidential). 

However, other questions dealing with the Better Place solution, user experience, etc., are all worthy of complete blog posts that you will see in the future.  As for our next milestone, Better Place is honored to be participating in the Frankfurt Motor Show beginning next week, where we will be showcasing a comprehensive solution of EV services, charging infrastructure and network software.

The show will start to be documented on our website, Flickr and YouTube channels as early as Tuesday, 3AM PST. Hope you'll visit back then...

Great! We will all be looking forward to the Frankfurt Motor Show and your answers to some of those nagging yet non-market-specific questions.

Great to see the company blog up and running. Look forward to hearing from the BP staff.