Better Place's not-so-good fate

It was a shock of sorts when I read that Better Place's CEO Dan Cohen formally announced bankruptcy.

In my seven year career as an automotive industry analyst, Better Place is the first company that I have seen from boom to bust.

It was for an electric vehicle (EV) / battery technology market sizing and monitoring study for a German luxury OEM in 2007-08 that I first came across Better Place. Conceived and started by the charismatic Shai Agassi, it was one of the most talked about new ventures. What I heard was that Shai and former Israeli prime minister Simon Perez are close friends and it was after Shai introduced Renault CEO Carlos Ghosn and Simon Perez that the whole Better Place and Renault partnership took off (with Renault investing an undisclosed amount in the now bankrupt company).

While most OEMs and utility providers were figuring out ways for the mass acceptability of EVs (which were not gaining traction due to the short driving range and long battery charging time), Shai came out with a smart alternative of replacing the battery pack altogether when an EV was low on charge. The idea seemed so appealing that Renault developed a proprietary technology called "Quick Drop" exclusively for Better Place; where Renault Fluence EV owners could drive in and replace the battery packs in around 10 minutes, the same time it takes for a conventional fossil fuel car to refill.

But Shai's solution was not well accepted by users, mostly due to the following issues.

• Better Place solely focused on battery swaps while ignoring the quintessential aspect of faster charging, which is what customers want
• Battery swaps still did not reduce range anxiety for EV owners and what really was the need of the hour was more charging infrastructure in public places and along highways
• Wrong choice of car — the markets where the Better Place - Renault "quick drop" program was launched (Denmark and Israel) prefer compact cars, mostly hatchback. Unfortunately, the pilot vehicle for the project was the Renault Fluence
• Lastly, and maybe the most crucial reason was that other EV OEMs did not follow suit. Apart from Renault, none of the other OEM bought the concept of battery swap. Even one more OEM with battery swap could have saved, or at least delayed, Better Place's fall.

A very nice article on Better Place.


UPDATE: Another very interesting article I came across today (30 May 2013)

Electric vehicles in India

Any topic on electric vehicles (EVs) in India would invariably veer (at least for now) toward the Reva, by the Mahindra and Mahindra and Maini group joint-venture (Mahindra Reva Electric Vehicles Private Limited). Founded in 1994 by Sudarshan Maini and based in Bangalore, the Reva Electric Car Company, is involved in designing and manufacturing of compact EVs. In fact, the Reva (the present generation called the REVAi) is the largest selling EV in the world, not because of its range (80 kilometer) or its looks, but simply because of its price. The Reva (priced at approximately US$7,000) is five to 142 times cheaper than the Nissan Leaf and the Tesla Roadster, respectively!

Anyway, this write-up is not about the Reva, but to take the Reva as an example and try and discuss the ‘plight’ of EVs in India.

I have stayed in Bangalore for about four years before moving up north to the Delhi NCR. During my stay in Bangalore, the Reva was a pretty common sight, and I would see at least one of those EVs on my way to office or back. However, in the national capital region, I have failed to spot a single Reva in the one and a half years that I have been here. This made me ponder about this disparity, because Delhi and its satellite townships are a fair representation on the automotive scene in India.

I was fairly surprised and began thinking about why there is this divide in accepting an EV across different cities. And also on the fact that if there were to be more EVs in India, would there be a difference in mass acceptance, based on demographics, customer taste and infrastructure availability, or rather the lack of it.

Here is what I figured out:

• Infrastructure: In Delhi, people fight for parking space. They get physically violent and at times your car is parked more than 300 meters from where you stay. In Bangalore, people usually have verbal altercations and generally mange to park their cars where they can see it. In some places in Delhi, the lanes are so narrow that it is almost impossible to park your car next to your house without causing an impediment to traffic. So, keeping an EV in Delhi can be quite a task, because recharging it would be a nightmare. Even office parking slots do not provide charging points for EVs. Essentially, it is much more practical to own and operate an EV in Bangalore, compared to Delhi.

Also, after sales and service for the Reva is negligible, if not altogether absent. As a consumer, everybody expects their car to be taken care of in an authorised service station for at least three years post-purchase. Mahindra and Reva need to increase the number of after sales service centers for people to feel comfortable buying their product. In fact, both Mahindra and Reva need to leverage the Mahindra service network and consciously draw consumers’ attention to the fact that the Mahindra network is there to support Reva consumers.

• Power scenario: In the satellite townships of Delhi, such as Gurgaon, power supply is very erratic. Power-cuts last up to eight hours at a stretch, and eight-hour-long power-cuts are not one-off incidents, they happen on a weekly basis. So, if you are in Gurgaon, even if you could park your EV in your living room, you still would not be able to recharge its batteries. Comparatively, Bangalore has fewer power-cuts and they generally do not last more than an hour. Also, electricity is far dearer in the NCR region – it could go up to INR7 per unit at places.
• Customer taste and requirement: This is a very subjective factor and it holds true not only for EVs, but all automobiles in general. For instance, you will see more white cars up north and more black cars down south. Indian consumers have different preferences for different colors in different regions. Coming back to EVs, no doubt the Reva back-up as the second car in all households in Bangalore, but in Delhi, the second car would be a Chevrolet Beat, or even a Tata Nano, but never a Reva. Quite possibly, because of the other factors I mentioned that go against the Reva, but also possibly because the Reva, is not up to the taste of consumers in the North. Bigger cars still hold an appeal up North. (You might want to argue about the Nano in the previous sentence; but the Nano is much roomier and has a sense of pride in ownership due to all the news it generated and because it is from Tata)
• Government initiative: It is a known fact that new technology cannot find mass-acceptance without government support. True that the Indian government has started, or at least given thought, to providing subsidies for EV and alternate powertrain suppliers and manufacturers. That is the first step and not sufficient enough to drive EV acceptance in India. Consumers should also benefit for choosing lesser polluting vehicles. Also, state governments should do away with taxes and levies on selling EVs. This will bring a price uniformity for EVs across states.

Therefore, I think that for EVs to be successful in India, we need to consider different markets (read cities) as unique and offer different solutions for the mass acceptance of the EV. A solution for the success of EVs in Pune, will not work in Chennai. India needs to be segregated on the basis of the different parameters mentioned above. However, on a national level, the issues of power and infrastructure shortage, state government encouragement, and the likes will still act against the interest of EVs. For that matter, pure-play EVs might not be the solution to clean transportation in India at all. Maybe, we need to replicate the success of CNG buses in the passenger vehicle domain, or maybe, we need to think of more indigenous alternate fuels, such as biogas. In fact, cheaper, cleaner and efficient last-mile connectivity could become a panacea for traffic congestion and vehicle pollution in India. We could, in theory, bypass the trials of alternate powertrain and be an example in efficient public transportation solutions, just like we bypassed the muscle car era and hopped straight on to compact cars, which are only beginning to make their mark in older and more mature automotive markets.