electronrun.com

Project Better Place is finding its first application in Israel. Earlier this week, its CEO Shai Agassi, Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Renault-Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn took part in a press conference to announce the collaboration. Project Better Place has raised $2.3 billion from private investors -mainly in Israel- and will invest initially $200 million and a total of $1 billion by the project’s completion. The project will consist of the following:

• Electric cars from Renault-Nissan that is extremely keen to get in the alternative automotive field. Range will be 100 km in cities and 160 km on intercity roads. Availability will start in 2011.
• A network of 500,000 charging points where drivers will be able to swap their depleted lithium-ion batteries for fresh ones.

Most drivers in Israel only cover short daily distances and will be able to recharge their car batteries themselves if they so wish. Israel will be a good testing ground for the new technologies since the distances covered are nowhere near what European or American drivers cover on a daily basis. Naturally, nobody would underestimate the politics taking place in such a huge project. Shai Agassi is an Israeli and it is natural that he has there his strongest contacts. The electric car is fine with everybody as an idea, but despite what most people think that it has been killed by oil companies, the truth is that it hasn’t progressed due to teething technical issues and not because of politics. Let’s look at the particular project:

• Electric cars indeed have zero emissions but the plants producing the electricity to charge their batteries pollute a lot. Project Better Place does not deal at all with the fact that a lot of small smokestacks are replaced by a few large ones. As things stand, and despite Israel’s strong record with solar energy, it is impossible to do the charging of all those batteries in a clean way. I have previously written about Desertec and American Scientist’s proposition for EU and US energy independence respectively, but such large projects are far from applicable very soon.
• I consider the estimates of what ranges drivers expect from electric cars completely silly. Who says it should be 100, 200 or 300 km? And with what criteria? The truth is that since we drive conventional cars we expect their potential electrical replacements to provide the same capabilities. Outside the city I am used to a range of up to 900 km with my diesel and I expect something of that order if I am to replace it. When I do a long trip, I do not want to stop all the time like a person with kidney problems.
• Batteries are nasty things. Firstly, lithium-ion batteries lose a significant percentage of their capacity with time and as a result the stated ranges are over-optimistic. Secondly, 100% electric cars require a lot of them and collection and recycling can be logistic nightmares.
• Oil has a worldwide infrastructure. If I was an Israeli that wanted to go abroad I would not dive in and invest in a completely electric car.

All in all, Project Better Place represents some progress but it does not address serious issues. If electric cars are to replace the conventional ones they must be at least as good in every single characteristic. If I expect a new car to be better than a ten year old car, why should I not expect the replacement of my current car to be better in every single way? And if each one of us is to have two cars, one for the city plus one for long distances, it beats the whole environmental logic since the production of a new car is enormously energy and material intensive.

I feel that going for 100% electric cars gets drivers -and a country- locked in some really serious restrictions. And of course this is why the whole automotive industry is going nuts over hybrids. With lithium-ion batteries they provide the advantages of Project Better Place without the safety and range issues. Add a super-long-range and economical diesel in the recipe and the picture gets even better. The time when we will use our battery driven electric motors of our hybrids without the need to burn petrol or diesel almost 100% of the time will be the moment when we will need our internal combustion engines no more. But not before then!

Link 1: Eart2tech

Link 2: Project Better Place