TechPulse 360

Better Place’s plan to refuel electric cars by swapping their batteries at specially designed service stations could work, says Byron Shaw, managing director at General Motors’ advanced technology office in Silicon Valley.

Better Place will have a better chance of succeeding in countries where drivers cover shorter distances, says Byron Shaw

In countries where drivers typically cover shorter distances – such as Israel – it has the best changes of succeeding, Shaw said. “It will work in certain places.”

Shaw offered his observations during an interview Monday evening at a gathering of the German American Business Association in Silicon Valley.

At GM, if “we thought we could get the cost of the battery (out of the car) we would,” he said, explaining that electric car batteries are an expensive component.

Better Place believes it has done so by taking ownership of the battery and installing recharged batteries in cars for a service fee. The company also plans a network of charging stations for vehicle owners to plug in.

The firm hopes to have 100,000 cars on the roads in Denmark and Israel – its first two markets – by 2016. California also is a target market.

In Israel, drivers often travel short distances, said Shaw. In Denmark, also a small country, the Better Place plan “might work” as well, he said.

What about larger Califorina? “It could” work,” he added.

Better Place and Renault will put 200,000 electric cars on the roads of Denmark and Israel by 2016 as the two companies promote their battery-swapping alternative to the internal combustion engine.

In a press announcement, the companies said they plan to build at least 100,000 vehicles for each country – two of the nations installing networks of Better Place recharging stations and battery switching centers.

Better Place strikes deals with Microsoft, Intel and Flextronics, which will build charging stations

The United States and Japan are also on the Better Place hit list as the company tries to convince consumer that an electric car with an easily replaced battery will satisfy short- and long-distance driving needs.

The building plans were among a series of announcements Better Place made at the start of this week’s Frankfurt Motor Show.

Among the developments was the news that Renault unveiled the first switchable battery for use in Israel and Denmark in addition to a five-seat electric sedan designed for 2011 delivery in Denmark and Israel.

Better Place also said it struck a deal with Flextronics. The contract manufacturer will build 1,000 charging stations to be field-tested and scale up produce to 100,000 stations for deployment by 2011. Better Place is presently testing almost 800 charging spots in Israel.

In a second partnership, Better Place said it agreed to work with the Israeli R&D arms of Intel and Microsoft to develop an in-car computing platform. The platform will include an embedded version of Microsoft’s Windows and Intel’s Atom chip.

The platform, when completed, will support Better Place’s in-car software – AutOS – which the company showed publicly for the first time. AutOS keeps track of a car’s energy use and be open enough, Better Place said, that developers will be able to write applications to run on it, much as they do for Apple’s iPhone.