Shai Agassi may make the world a better place some day, but apparently it won’t be today. Late last month, his electric car battery swapping venture filed for a court motion in Israel for the appointment of a temporary liquidator, which will effectively cease company operations. The Wall Street Journal sees this as a blow to Renault, the French carmaker that had produced a vehicle capable of having its battery replaced using Better Place’s system. The Journal goes on to report that only 2,500 of the 100,000 Renaults ordered by Better Place had been sold.
It was a strange coincidence then that a few days after I heard about this action on their behalf I noticed a bumper sticker supporting the company. Perhaps this is a mere blip in the road toward swappable batteries or emblematic of something more dire for this technology. The need to have enough vehicles with compatible battery swapping will be essential. In addition to the actual swapping stations, there may be more of a market for the supercharging highway that Tesla envisions.
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