Better Place and Li-ion Battery Technological Development

Dear Juan, A lot of other factors are in play when a start up don't make it. I think it is premature to say the battery swap concept was the culprit. The idea was good but not the execution, they took on more than they can handle and because they had no role in producing the EVs or the battery packs, it was tough to control the pricing of the end product. The $800+ million burn is not money down the drain, others like Tesla and others may benefit from a lot from Better Place. More than 97% of start up don't make it anyway, it wasn't expected to make it but the lessons learnt will pave the way for the next guy to succeed. The cost for the battery packs needs to come down before they can make it attractive for the masses until that happens EVs will still be a niche product for the upper class who could afford them TK [135]

TECK KEE SHIH, First, the swapping idea was not a good idea. Do you know why Elon Musk never bought it? Well, because he bet on supercharging instead. Note also that supercharging is part of Li-ion battery technological development since not all batteries can utilize the kind of superchargers developed by Tesla.

Second, you touched upon an interesting point: Better Place's inability to control the EV value chain, something I already mentioned (albeit in reference to BYD) in a previous work I published a few weeks ago on Seeking Alpha (See: http://seekingalpha.com/article/1443181-lithium-ion-starter-batteries-will-byd-take-the-place-of-a123-systems). [137]