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I suggest he’s going to give you what we have in our Renault’s in Israel: state of charge prediction at destination. Added bonus: automatic route planning via Super Chargers. Here’s my full prediction.

Kinda funny reading all this stuff. I’ve sat through 90+ automated Better Place switches without a hitch. Over the network (while the receiver works out what to do following the bankruptcy) we’re still seeing 300+ switches per day and failure rates are very low. The question is not if it can be...

Exactly my point. If Tesla can replicate the Model S down to a $20,000 market all's fine. I'm really not a Tesla hater, I really would love one of the cars, it's just that 20,000 cars per year in the US is not going to change ANYTHING for the wider world. It certainly isn't going to drive...

I've written a featured OpEd at the Times of Israel replying to this today drawing on my experience driving the battery switch capable Renault Fluence ZE in Israel. It may be of interest to some here. Tesla is selling the wrong story on electric cars Extract: The Tesla Model S is a...

I've published my longer take on Shai and Better Place. I spoke to the New York Times guys last night. Shai Agassi Out Of Better Place (Or Is He?) | Israellycool

Anyone talking about impact on batteries? You all own your own, how many times a week will you want to do this. Are the stations positioned for the base battery or just the big ones? $100k seems steep, seeing as how Better Place stations have been talked about at $500k and coming down with...

I will admit to taking the long route home a couple of times... and every now and then I choose the route with the most traffic lights through upscale neighbourhoods so I can have fun embarrassing the BMWs, Mercs and Lexuses (Lexi?) at the lights with my stupid golf cart Renault ;-)

Wow, best you can think of? No, displacement from other cars especially small local deliveries in place of my company's 6 year old diesel delivery van when moving 10 laptops or similar. I'd say big win. Also much lower use of wife's big 4x4. I've also taken many people to/from Jerusalem barely...

My latest piece is up at Green Car Reports. 100 days with my EV including Likes and Dislikes (yes I have some). My post at Israellycool also includes live graphs showing my daily drive distribution. I never really paid attention to this but my pattern is absolutely perfect for my EV. If...

I've just posted a short video on my blog showing how the navigation system (named Oscar) in the Better Place car plans routes to accommodate battery switches. It might be of interest here How Can I Drive To Eilat?

It's a loan, got to make the payments on it. That's a lot of pund coins in the payment meters.

Full post up on the twitter exploits of Shai Agassi yesterday driving a complete circuit of Israel. He drove the equivalent of North to South of California in an EV with a battery half the size of the smallest Tesla S. Better Place Distance Dash

Just one point is worth making again: Better Place insist on the ability to home charge overnight. They just won't sell a car to street parking Tel Aviv residents at the moment. Battery switches are not seen as a normal way to get energy into the car: they are supplemental only on longer trips...

I went to bed too early. He didn't stay in Eilat, he just took a picture there. He went home too so his total was 1,150 km or 715 miles for the day. That was 22:54, first tweet was 05:51 so that was 15 hours. 76 kmh or 48 mph moving averages and with Israel's roads and traffic and human biology...

Shai Agassi tweeted a journey today. He started somewhere near Tel Aviv, drove up to the Lebanon border and Mt Hermon then down to Eilat. Just over 1000km in around 10 hours I think. His final tweet showed 1000km and a near 100% battery. A couple of the switch stations in the south he used are...

I'm in London on holiday and will be attending this conference. I've been asked to give a brief few comments as a customer of Better Place during the early breakfast. Then I'll be around all day. If anyone here is going to be there and specifically interested in Better Place please get in...

And seeing as how I drag raced my MGF once against a 1929 Bentley with a Rolls Royce Merlin engine taken from a Spitfire, things are interchangeable. The rear only drum brakes on that monster could have used an upgrade.

Renault are lending me a Twizy for the day on Thursday to attend the Clean Tech Investment conference in London. Looking forward to it: much nicer than going back on the Tube. If there's one thing about London I don't miss it's Tube travel. London: Investing In Future Transport | Israellycool

It's a simple question: will fixed battery 100 mile EV's sell in any kind of reasonable numbers that make big car companies interested (not the numbers Tesla can make) over the next 4 to 8 years? I reckon even if the battery / cost ratio improves by x2 the cars will still appear to be a little...

I don't think it will get to the point of so many different packs. In fact I think more standardisation will come from NOT retr0fitting existing ICE cars. Right now the Leaf and Fluence have almost identical batteries in all but shape. It's pretty obvious that the best place for a battery IF you...

The only way BP can "kill" another EV in a market is by offering a service that makes fixed battery ownership less attractive. Israel is no test because nobody is bringing any other plug in cars. Denmark and Australia will be different. That's when we'll see. My return trip last night to...

What's the labor cost of switching on either of those models? I wonder if Tesla and Nissan will assume the responsibility for re-sale. I wonder who will certify the exact battery pack condition, that's going to be a much more important part of buying a used EV than the number of miles .

Edwargo has done a pretty admirable job of figuring out the original business plans of Better Place from first principles. I agree with most of his calcs but I think that, unfortunately, where Better Place really gets intersting financially is behind the scenes with the grid and energy...

I didn't listen to much past the Hydrogen mysticism. I agree, unless we can fuse it with more Hydrogen it's not going to be a useful fuel.

I'm sure the 200km round trip I just made was a complete scam then. I must remember to tell the person I met in Haifa that I was not in his office and I didn't have a quick lunch with him before returning via another customer and travelling all the way home at 120 to 130kmh without regard to...

On the strength of unsubstantiated allegations I suspect I won't be paying much attention to anything else those two have to say.

Two guys who love Hydrogen and throw around accusations of malfeasance with no evidence? You're having a laugh right? Have you seen this story about Hydrogen powered Taxis at the London Olympics being flat bed transported 130 miles ever night by diesel truck to fill up? Olympic hydrogen...

I can see from the displays on my Renault that the hill hold feature uses no power. It's quite clear it's holding the car on the brakes not balancing the car with power to the motor. I'm pretty sure I feel this because the motor only drives the front wheels and the brakes hold all the wheels...

Sorry, wrong term... I guess I'm talking about moving without directly pressing the accelerator. What do we call that, crawling? My Diesel Alfa could pull away and crawl in 2nd gear without need for the accelerator.

I do mean putting the car in gear and letting the idle of the engine pull you along. Specifically the last manual car I owned was an Alfa 147 Diesel in the UK. 2.0l turbo diesel and huge torque. Wheel spinning on gear changes from 2nd to 3rd if you wanted. That would roll quite nicely with the...

All of the manuals I've driven would creep in reverse or first gear without use of the accelerator, certainly enough for most parking. Changing the way cars behave in general serves little purpose. It just makes new people uncomfortable. I used to love fly-on fly-off handbrakes on track cars...

I have a creeping and hill holding Renault Fluence ZE. I never really thought consciously about the behaviour till reading here: my car seems to have been designed to behave exactly like a traditional creeping automatic and that's why it felt very comfortable. As I posted above, the hill hold...

Reuse of old batteries is another reason why my calculation says the price I pay to lease a battery is reasonable. The batteries cost less for BP and they have a better chance of getting top dollar for them at the end because they can bulk sell.

Let's push it a little further: if an electricity grid has too much renewable, especially wind such as Denmark, which blows at night can you imagine being paid to take electricity and store it? For an individual user this negotiation isn't going to happen soon. For a provider with 30,000 of the...

Public charging is always going to be small compared to home charging and it is predominantly day time. The real added value in EVs is night time charging. That is the most fundamental part of BP: capturing control of the home charging of large fleets of EVs. This is valuable in aggregate but...

I can confirm that the full BP model, as we have in Israel is points 1 to 5 and I'll add a couple that are underrated but I'm beginning to appreciate: Meticulously updated and maintained GPS data about live switch stations and public charging spots - because it's a subscription model we are...

Thank you, nice to see someone who isn't a Stokholm syndromed owner agrees with me! I'm recommending BP to people who are runnin XP on their laptops, it works for everybody not just advanced techie greens.

I know how much I value what I'm getting from BP over and above electricity and I have a better idea at the real cost than almost anyone else outside their company. I feel it represents extraordinary value even though total ownership including battery depreciation is ONLY 20% cheaper than...

BP are doing something special in terms of customer service. You have no idea because you've convinced yourself they will fail. EVs are not supported today by gas stations at ever corner. EVs now need, and for some foreseeable future will need, special help. It's possible that, absent switch...

BP in Hawaii will obviously not be charging as they are in Israel. They're giving free public charging till the end of the year I believe. After that I'm not sure what their business model is but I would assume it will include installing and maintaing home charging stations for people and a...

What you're asking for defies the laws of physics and is not intuitive. It's also a pain in the arse if you want to reverse down a hill. Do you really want to select reverse and apply pressure to the accelerator to roll back slightly? How long should the car hold you? Indefinitely? If you come...

Hawaii's islands are so small they don't need switch stations. A Leaf has pretty much enough range to make it all the way around and back to where you started. Hawaii is also suitable because they pay more for gasoline. The most important variable in whether BP is economic or not is the...

Fully automatic hill hold in my 6 speed clutch less semi automatic Honda Civic though it wasn't perfect. Fully automatic hill hold in Electric Renault Fluence ZE is perfect.

No. It's been OK for some time. I have had precisely zero snagging issues with the car. Not one. It's not built from the very best materials for sure but it's solid and well screwed together. I had the dash taken apart to fit a Parrot bluetooth system and it's all snapped back together without a...

Hawaii is too small, a Leaf can drive round without trouble. Switching is not much help. Better Place is operating a charging network there.

Design is for unattended, for now and possibly for ever in Israel they're attended. Using them really is completely automatic. I can't image terrorist blowing them up, not enough people there for them to care. And they can be sped up dramatically. I worked that out by seeing inside but Shai...

The number thrown around in Israel is $500k. Each time I've asked I've been told that is ball park. Only 8 batteries required, not the biggest part of the cost.

Yup, no word if it's coming to Israel, problem is BP may have over committed on the Fluence. But the Fluence is a more popular car size here. Corporates go for its class way ahead of anything else.

In CA I've often taken a Mustang from Hertz as that's fun: but it's still a pretty cheap Mustang and even that costs a bit extra. Just had a look, it was a Nissan Maxima 3.5l V6. I guess it's a $35k car retail in the US (oh for your car prices in Israel, that would cost exactly double that here...

It'll be a while befor 85kWh battery cars are common enough to rent from Hertz for less than $100 per day.