It’s too early in electric vehicle development to fixate on any one solution at the present time, unless it is a solution which is adaptable to further innovations, battery swap stations will involve a huge cost to create, and don’t fit the criteria of adaptability to future innovation.

A lease? Soon, we won’t have the credit rating to get a new Verizon cell phone, let alone a car.

BP? There is a BP who’s in the petrol business and who fancies a lot of green paint. I bet they are already talking to their trademark lawyers. And the lawyers advise them: “Wait until they have some grids in place. THEN we go after them.”

GSM model? Like you’ll bleed through your nose when you veer outside of your home area? Roaming?

Quite obviously, they didn’t read all those “If Microsoft built cars” jokes. Or, more frighteningly, they did and said: “Now there’s an idea.”

Not so. Nissan has said total cost of ownership “will be about the same as a conventional car”. The EV’s will be substantially more expensive to purchase, but the fuel (electricity) cost will be substantially less, depending on local electric rates. That also explains the basis of the business plan: to overcome the higher upfront costs of the EV’s, BP will simply offer “the plan”, essentially a lease including operating costs.

Big deal. Back in 68, I could see the future in bright colors. And I didn’t even have a car.

No wonder Hawaii, land of the dakine, gets high on the idea. The road to Hana will be a great test track.

Sophisticated mercantile economy with high trust-per-capita amongst the citizenry; where all of Better Place’s batteries won’t disappear into the black market every time some one drives off with one.

Excellent power-grid and dynamos feeding it. You can’t wander too far from your fuel infrastructure on such a short leash, power availability has to be plentiful and standardized everywhere the vehicles might operate.

Highly urbanized, tiny undemanding geography to operate in. Ever watch a Prius’s mileage over a real mountain pass? The batteries crap out five minutes into the hill and its 1.4 liters of Atkinson apathy the rest of the way, excursion-esque mileage. A pure electric car would just get thumped going over Teton pass for instance. Better be a Better Place on either side of every mountain pass. Forget driving through Nevada to Vegas from the Rocky Mountain states during winter. You’ll be the latest trekker in a long line to die in the Great Basin.

Those “needs” for Better Place to work pretty much eliminate the BRIC countries being compatible with that. Countries like that are too big and bad geographically to make something like that work. Maybe urban corridors like Boston through D.C. or San Angeles on the left coast. But that’s it.

Oh, and hope no one figures out a better battery, or else all that moolah in now-inferior batteries laying around will force your hand and you’ll need to get on the Dubya TARP hotline. I don’t see it working.

Battery tech remains forever primitive.

Yes, life is hard. But a Better Place awaits.

Sadly, if this yutz is successful, it’ll be a scenario much like DutchChris elaborated.

@vvk, I’m not holding my breath either. Perhaps for slightly different reasons, but I’m with you on that point.

And when a better battery IS built – it just may be coming to you from Saudi Arabia. They know how much oil they have. They know the future is solar/electric/some wind. They aren’t just sitting on their hands waiting for someone to cut their market. They’re investing.

Yeah, keep dreaming. I am not holding my breath.

I think their business model is outstanding. It is the only way to make electric cars approach practicality of ICE. Assuming they can automate the battery swapping process…

As for the Hawaii grid project “investors have yet to be lined up for the all-island project” according to Reuters.

And I bet Obama would be surprised to learn he’s already adopted a electric car infrastructure.

What they do is they exploit the weaknesses of current battery technology: high price, low energy density, long recharge times to offer their services as an intermediary. Their trick is not to sell you the battery for your car (”too expensive, too complex, don’t worry your pretty head about it”); they will rent it too you along with a subscription to their network of recharge points and battery exchange stations. You will pay your monthly subscription fee and a charge per mile. Kinda like your GSM subscription. The GSM businessmodel is in fact their role model. Just like for your cell phone you end up paying for services which real monetary value is obfuscated.

Another way of looking at it: they want to step in the void the oil companies leave in case of a transition to electric motoring: suppliers of energy. Except there won’t be any competition. Just Better Place setting the price.

The problem of course(apart from the huge chance of monopolistic behaviour) is that new battery technology that allows for cheap, fast recharging, high energy density batteries will make the Better Place recharging network and financial scheme obsolete. Another problem is that affordable PHEV’s could significantly reduce demand for oil at a much lower costs until BEV’s become affordable and practical.

But since they operate well connected to the governments of countries they infest I reckon there is no getting rid of them once they set up shop in your country, since they’ll probably cut the governments in on their action. This is attractive for governments that used to impose heavy taxes on car fuels: it solves the problem of taxing electric motoring.

The cars may be priced competitively but IIRC the batteries will be leased. Wired had a puff piece a few months back.