Bullet Points: The Better Place Model for Breaking Oil Dependence

THE BETTER PLACE MODEL FOR BREAKING OIL DEPENDENCE
Michael Granoff (Head of Oil Independence Policies, Better Place)
Better Place is an international company based in Israel that takes a novel approach to transportation without oil. Since its launch in 2007, Better Place has received over $200 million in private financing, altered the tax law in Israel to support its business model, and aligned with Renault and Nissan to manufacture its electric vehicles. Better Place is currently working with California and Hawaii on groundbreaking sustainable transportation infrastructure

• The US uses oil about three times faster than it is produced — importing 65%
• The world’s oil fields that are in production today are declining at somewhere between 5-9% annually
• Project Better Place has three goals: sustainable transportation, global energy independence, and freedom from oil
  • A lithium ion battery that could fit into a car safely and power that car, according to the performance needs that are at least as good as what we’re accustomed to, has a range of 100-120 miles
  • 95% of the time we get in our car we don’t go more than a hundred miles
  • With the Better Place system, for a long trip, you would stop at a battery exchange station and mechanically have your battery exchanged
  • All of the batteries would be part of the infrastructure
• Better Place buys the electricity, and sells miles to the consumer who subscribes to the service:
  • according to driving habits and best value
• Currently, energy inefficient cars are being built:
  • We must convince the companies that build them to build the right cars
• Israel, Denmark, Australia, and Japan are pursuing the Better Place model
  • It would cost ~$500 per car for the infrastructure, which provides range extension to the electric vehicles
  • Operating cost would be ~8 cents a mile, a fraction of the cost to drive current vehicles while maintaining the gas station infrastructure
  • Rebates could be applied to new electric vehicle purchases in order to reduce up-front cost to consumers
  • Integration of global positioning services with other services, including energy management services is interactive between the control center and the vehicles
  • The battery would be charged and ready at the estimated arrival time to the battery exchange station
  • Every parking spot would have a plug — the ability for someone who’s driving an all-electric car to come to work and know that by the end of the day, the car will be fully charged
  • The utility companies are moving into smart-grid technology that will determine which cars need to be charging most, while the rest of the vehicles can charge whenever the grid is at its lowest level of demand
  • Renault-Nissan are taking existing car manufacturing models and modifying them for mass production and deployment
  • In vehicle-to-grid technology, intermittency of renewable energy would be utilized as the grid demands and would flatten that demand curve on the electricity grid