Better Place Denmark to plug electric cars by 2011
California start-up Better Place and Danish utility Dong Energy said Tuesday they have lined up financing to bring an electric car charging network to Denmark by 2011.
The two organizations have secured almost $103 million in equity and convertible debt that will go toward constructing stations where drivers can swap in fresh batteries for electric cars.
(Credit:
Better Place)
Better Place's business plan focuses on building a network of automated battery-swapping stations along driving corridors. Places to rapidly charge or get fresh batteries will address the range limitations of existing car batteries, according to Better Place.
Although Better Place has announced customers with the governments of Israel, Hawaii, Portugal, and San Francisco for its network of charging stations, Denmark appears to be the first to secure financing to build the charging infrastructure.
Once a network is set up, state-controlled Dong Energy said its excess wind power capacity can be used for charging electric cars. Denmark now gets 20 percent of its electricity from wind turbines, but a portion of that electricity is exported because it can't be stored economically.
"Our goal in investing in Better Place Denmark is to help reduce CO2 emissions and increase the consumption of sustainable energy by capturing and leveraging wind power more efficiently," Dong Energy CEO Anders Eldrup said in a statement.
The structure of the deal underlines the pieces auto industry executives say need to be in place before electric cars can be used by large numbers of consumers.
Utilities need to be involved to understand and manage the shift in power-grid load that electric cars bring. Government incentives need to be in place to overcome the higher cost of battery-powered vehicles. In Denmark, the government does not levy a sales tax on electric cars to promote their use.
The start-up also announced that it has hired former Microsoft Europe executive Jens Moberg as CEO of Better Place Denmark.
Better Place was founded in fall 2007 by Shai Agassi, former president of software giant SAP.
Martin LaMonica is a senior writer for CNET's Green Tech blog. He started at CNET News in 2002, covering IT and Web development. Before that, he was executive editor at IT publication InfoWorld. E-mail Martin. 
Exactly. Ridiculously, for two decades, commentators have been complaining about the distance limitations of batteries without recognizing this as the obvious solution - one that would quickly be implemented if we had a reasonable number of electric cars on the roads.
This company or AAA will also need to be able to deliver fresh batteries or a quick charge to stranded motorists.
But things can change quickly in the USA with the right push and government vision. Obama seems focused on the issue but in the end little will happen without funding.
Something drastic needs to happen here in this country. My primary hope is that Obama will push for a paradigm shift in spending away from non-productive military spending to alternative energy initiatives.
A simple example...in January 2006 the cost of the war in Iraq was $720 million per day.
One day...producing what? NOTHING...except international hatred, death and destruction.
Imagine spending e.g. $720 million per day on US produced solar panel and windmill deployments.
A solar panel system could be build for $30K for a residential house.
It means EVERY DAY expanding with 24,000 more households to alternative energy. In one year that's 8.76 million households per year or a bit less than 10% of all US households in just one year.
It's common sense because it's good for the environment, economy (incl. trade balance) and unemployment rate. Remember, when first build, the energy is produced for free eventually paying back all the initial expenses.
And as a side-note, I'm sure most soldiers would prefer to have a normal healthy job in the alternetive energy sector near their family in the USA rather than in some military base :-)
Move the cars along the highway. There are proposals for doing this. The roads are the governments job. They could just as well electrify the roads, and move the cars along the roads on dollies or flatcars. This is no more ludicrous than legislating that every car gets 100MPG. Make the government fix the problem by changing the highways.
Battery technology is continuously improving towards better capacity and durability.
The Tesla Roadster (check www.teslamotors.com) is claimed to drive 220 miles on one charge by the way. This high performance electric car is perhaps too expensive initially but there is no reason to believe it can not be manufactured to sell at < 30K at some point.
What really is needed is a STANDARD for how electric cars need to be charged and batteries need to be auto-swapped. I would imagine that a battery swapping station (gas station of the future) could be less complex than the mechanism involved in automatic car washing.
So imagine yourself some day driving >200 miles in a car like the Tesla Roadster and drive into a battery swapping station and pay with your credit card $10 and get your battery swapped (under your car) in less than a minute (quicker than it takes to fill up a tank today).
The key to success is that the US government sets up some milestones towards such goal and an organisation aimed to define the clear technical standards and business model for rolling out such infrastructure that cars and "battery stations" must comply with.
- by javsewpc January 27, 2009 5:58 PM PST
- "Utilities need to be involved to understand and manage the shift in power-grid load that electric cars bring."
- Like this Reply to this comment
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(7 Comments)The answer for investor owned utilities (IOUs) to get involved is in the EWPC article "Just as Pogo, IOUs Found the Enemy" in the Internet link http://www.energyblogs.com/ewpc/index.cfm/2009/1/26/Just-as-Pogo-IOUs-Found-the-Enemy