One man's mumblings..... Shai Agassi has a plan. : comments.
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Re: This is crazy talk, and not the good kind.
Miles (driven) aren't tangible objects which are stockpiled and maintained in strategic locations either, but are windows of time and space on the existing road and energy networks.
Yes, batteries are expensive, heavy and inefficient, so what if someone else was handling the battery issue, and all you had to do was drive the car.
If you could, for example, pay X pennies per mile and exchange your car battery anytime you need to for a fresh battery (because the infrastructure is already there, because the battery switch takes 60 seconds, and because it's included in your mileage plan), and X was a smaller number than you pay for your gas car, would it still be crazy talk?
Re: This is crazy talk, and not the good kind.
He's not really selling miles, though. He's selling amps. Some of those amps are in an unpalatable form factor, others are just being resold from the power company. There's no real innovation there.
Yes, batteries are expensive, heavy and inefficient, so what if someone else was handling the battery issue, and all you had to do was drive the car.
If "someone else" has to handle the battery issue, they have to do it in a way that's environmentally sound *and* cost-effective or else it's just a big waste of time and money -- and if it's here in California, it'll be my tax money in some proposition like we saw this past election. :-P
If you could, for example, pay X pennies per mile and exchange your car battery anytime you need to for a fresh battery (because the infrastructure is already there, because the battery switch takes 60 seconds, and because it's included in your mileage plan), and X was a smaller number than you pay for your gas car, would it still be crazy talk?
I just can't handwave away the creation of that kind of infrastructure. The only way to come close to an "anytime exchange" model is to replace every gas station with a battery-replacement station and it's just too expensive. As for the sixty-second hardware swap, I work in hardware, I don't see that really being possible for something the size, weight, and awkwardness of a battery which stored enough zots to do anything useful.
If it were possible to somehow solve the infrastructure problem and the battery swap problem and have it be cheaper than I'm currently paying for gas? Sure. Am I gonna let the government increase the cost of my gasoline back up to four bucks a gallon to pay for it? Hell no.
.
The actual times for battery swapping that Agassi has mentioned are in the 3-5 minute range, not one minute.
Even if it's doubled to ten minutes, the key thing is that battery swapping is generally an exception. He also mentions calculating the average user will only need to swap batteries every 2-4 weeks. Unless you drive > 60 or whatever miles one way a day. To put it in perspective, their plans call for "250,000 charging ports, 200 battery-exchange stations" in the Bay Area. If swapping time doubles, you just need 2x the parking area at stations, and you can try to sell more things to people while they wait.
Brian, my main scepticisms are:
* Can enough batteries be made? Ie, is there enough lithium?
* May be leaning toward over-designing the tech in the system. Too many blythe mentions of using robotics (even for the charging stations, though it seems they will use a simple hand-plugged system at first). Developing their own "OS". Some of this might be a function of Wired reporting on it.
* Centralizing control (dispatch of vehicles to charging and battery swap stations) and payment. In another interview, he says he wants to be the "Google of electrons". Including the privacy issues and lock-in, apparently. Might be a nice business model, but rubs me the wrong way. Not enough that I'd pass up the subsidised car if they pull it off though. ;-)
I don't know if I'm convinced, but he has done a pretty good job of convincing me that I _don't_ want to but a hybrid, or a Chevy Volt.
Re: Better Place is a clever name.