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Comment by deepGem | Hacker News Reader

Better place, An Israeli startup tried electric cars with battery swapping and failed miserably.

So, decoupling battery from the car and allowing better competition in the battery space might fly. Car makers need not be bothered by the battery tech and can just focus on making good electric motors, since most of the car parts are from other vendors anyways.

However, the decoupling might not be all that rosy as Musk has demonstrated that safety is best achieved with total vertical integration. Even Tesla tried battery swapping but gave up.

This might work really well in 2 wheelers though. The existing bike manufacturers won't have to retool their factories by much to replace the engine with a motor and the batteries can be probably swapped in and out of the under seat space or something like that.

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> An Israeli startup tried electric cars with battery swapping and failed miserably.

I believe it’s a killer flaw to over-interpret the failure of a novel technology and/or business model.

Yesterday’s miserable failure may be tomorrow’s runaway success given some refinements or the better availability of component technology and/or the readiness of the market.

Over the decades I’ve experienced a few - one of the more memorable examples for me is the Apple Newton. A pretty miserable failure at the time. Fast forward a couple of decades, and most of us are now carrying the logical evolution of that device in our pockets, whether it be made by Apple or others.

totally, not debating that battery swap won't work for cars in the future but as of now, it probably won't.

Also, the changing business model resulting from the battery and the vehicle separation will most certainly lead to innovation in batteries. So cars can innovate on motors while battery makers can innovate on batteries and who knows a third market might emerge for those battery swapping robots.

It'll be interesting to watch out how this will plays out - Tesla as the all integrated electric vehicle (Apple) v/s the rest of the industry which might go the independent vehicle/battery/swap robot (wintel) route.

It's not clear that Tesla's was more than a compliance effort. California had a "fast-fueling" zero-emissions vehicle credit and by enabling battery swaps, Tesla qualified. California changed the incentives and Tesla shut down it's swapping efforts.

I'd love to know what the decision making process was, and if they were ever serious about rolling it out.

My assumption is that when designing the Model S, it wasn't yet clear that charging speeds would eventually become good enough that it made battery swap unnecessary.

Tesla wrote the playbook for a modern EV, so it's easy to look back in retrospect and assume they had a single clear vision, but battery swapping could easily have looked like a credible path back then.

Although I'm pretty sure that by the time they publicly announced it they knew it was a dead end, and its only use was publicity and ZEV credits.

I am inclined to agree with you.

Removable batteries for cars has a LOT of bulk and weight to deal with. More a "service interval" like action rather than a daily event. Still handy to have but not nearly so much incentive in the market.

But for motorbikes and scooters, maybe it could work. Especially small city scooter(125cc equivalent) work.

Mind you, I am picturing a dystopian future whereby all the UberEats-like delivery scooter people keep getting their batteries stolen...

edit: streamline

Israel is full of electric bikes with removable batteries that you can bring in with you into the coffee shop and charge while you eat/drink. Also makes the bike less desirable for thieves (another big problem).

Cool! And I think at least 30 minutes of my day is now going to be spent looking this up and seeing what models etc etc.

Thank you.

Theft is a major issue and all anti-theft measures will result in increased cost. One possible option is for the battery manufacturers to make the stolen batteries useless by short circuiting them or something like that. So there is total deterrence against theft.

It's not difficult to imagine a battery that is digitally tied to a particular vehicle or key fob. Please don't make dangerous suggestions like short circuiting though. Nobody wants their house to burn down just because someone had a "cute" idea.

I wonder how much it'd cost for them to license a tiny part of the low-frequency radio spectrum? The one for BBC Radio 4 covers most of the country with a single transmitter for example, using this old-school technology you could report your battery's serial number as stolen (with the appropriate authentication) and the company would broadcast a signal to short it out. This would be much harder to defeat than an internet-based solution I think.

It's trivial to defeat with a faraday cage.

Not if you want it to actually fit in the socket of a car or bike.

BetterPlace was a rent seeker that lobbied to limit ability to use other service providers including for example the home charging station. They lobbied to have the home chargers regulated so that only they could provide it.

They also spent money on useless operations and had serious internal politics. They were financed and controlled by a known rent seeker and shouldn't be taken as an example for what the technology can or cannot do

Better places tried to roll that out in denmark where I live.

I think the failiure was down to tree or four things:

- electric cars were still a novelty - low range, very few and unreliable battery changing stations. - expensive cars. - Only one model, a saloon car which is one of the least sold car types in denmark. People mostly go for microcars or stationwagon type cars plus SUV's.

Indian market is very different, very cost conscious. Also better place had a problem in the sense that it was 5-7 years too early, the concept was always a good one. NIO's success in China is demonstrating the same.

> An Israeli startup tried electric cars with battery swapping and failed miserably.

IIRC it was Renault with the Fluence Z.E pairing with a company named Better Place

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