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Intent: Move the automotive industry, drivers and utility sectors past the current dependency on oil by building an electric vehicle infra-structure that makes electric transport convenient and affordable.

The Better Place electrical car infrastructure is an ambitious design focused on the effort to move drivers, the automotive industry and energy-distribution past the internal-combustion engine.

Elements of the Better Place system include:

• Hundreds of thousands of plug-in charge-spots, meant to be even more ubiquitous and easily accessed than current petrol stations;

• Switching stations for mechanized battery exchange of lithium-ion batteries which, in a typical sedan, can deliver a range of about 100 miles / 160 kilometers on a single charge;

• Advanced computing platform and unique software integrated into electric vehicles to optimize use of the Better Place network,including navigational services;

• Energy-demand management capabilities for utility companies that can minimize charging requirements during peak electricity consumption hours by leveraging connectivity with a car and known user profiles; and

• An open network capable of serving all electric vehicle drivers to aid in an accelerated transition to electric vehicles.

Better Place also is working with automakers. First cars accommodating the sophisticated battery-switch mechanism (said to replace a car’s battery in less than a minute) are expected from Renault and Nissan in some two years.

Denmark’s state-owned DONG Energy has entered into an agreement to roll out the first complete Better Place system in 2011 in Copenhagen. DONG CEO Anders Eldrup points out that the advantage for DONG is an energy-storage capacity for electricity generated by Denmark’s windmills, which currently supply 20 percent of the nation’s energy. Denmark’s system will be the first in Europe and one of the first in the world.

INDEX:Award recipient Shai Agassi is the founder and CEO of Better Place and stresses the “holistic” approach of his design.

“Most of what we’ve done,” Agassi says, “is not just each individual design element, but thinking of a complete scenario, end-to-end, not leaving something for somebody to complete, not leaving something as a gap for the consumer to figure out how to get around it, not creating a problem for somebody else, not passing the problem from the carmaker to the battery maker, or the battery maker to the grid designers, or the utility company or the country. We thought of all constituencies and put together a complete system with a successful business model that entices consumers and at the same time is good for the country.”

How to spend 100.000 Euro on more design to improve life
Shai Agassi, the founder and CEO of Better Place, announced that Better Place is going to create a competition among students at all design schools around the world. “We actually believe there is a huge design transformation, which will come as we shift from the old model of cars to the new model of cars. The last transformation of cars happened in 1908 when Ford invented the model T and it took us another 100 years to come up with the invention of the warm cup holder. We look at other industries and these transformations happen a lot faster,” said Shai Agassi. “We need to engage the young and the bright minds of students around all universities, to rethink the car and our infrastructure, rethink what the city would look like when we have no noise, no pollution.”
 

Designed by:
Better Place Inc., Palo Alto, California, United States.

Designer:
Shai Agassi, Founder and CEO, Better Place

Additional credits:
NewDealDesign LLC (design strategy and industrial design); Nekuda DM Ltd. (Product  Development).

www.betterplace.com