Better Place
 |
|
| Venture backed private | |
| Industry | Transport |
| Fate | Bankrupt, liquidated in 2013 |
| Founded | 2007 |
| Founder | Shai Agassi |
| Headquarters | Palo Alto, California, United States |
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Key people
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Shai Agassi (Founder, Ex-CEO) Idan Ofer (Chairman) Dan Cohen (Chief Executive Officer) Ziva Patir (Vice President, International Standardization) Moshe Kaplinsky (BP Israel CEO)Dan Ram Head of Design & UX Kiyotaka Fujii (BP Head Asia Pacific-Japan) Lawrence Seef (Head of Business Development, Americas) Aliza Peleg (VP of Operations) Joe Paluska (Chief Marketing Officer) Karen Alter (Marketing Vice President) |
| Products |
Subscription-based electric car charging points and battery-switching stations Retail deliveries since 2Q 2012 in Israel |
| Website | BetterPlace.com |
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Better Place was a venture-backed international company that developed and sold battery-charging and battery-switching services for electric cars. It was formally based in Palo Alto, California, but the bulk of its planning and operations were steered from Israel, where both its founder Shai Agassi and its chief investors resided.
The company opened its first functional charging station the first week of December 2008 at Cinema City in Pi-Glilot near Tel Aviv, Israel The first customer deliveries of Renault Fluence Z.E. electric cars enabled with battery switching technology began in Israel in the second quarter of 2012, and at peak in mid September 2012, there were 21 operational battery-swap stations open to the public in Israel.
Better Place filed for bankruptcy in Israel in May 2013. The company's financial difficulties were caused by mismanagement, wasteful efforts to establish toeholds and run pilots in too many countries, the high investment required to develop the charging and swapping infrastructure, and a market penetration far lower than originally predicted by Shai Agassi. Less than 1,000 Fluence Z.E. cars were deployed in Israel and around 400 units in Denmark, after spending about US$850 million in private capital. After two failed post-bankruptcy acquisition attempts, the bankruptcy receivers sold off the remaining assets in November 2013 to Grngy for only $450,000.
The company was publicly launched on October 29, 2007, as Project Better Place, by Shai Agassi, the company's founder and CEO at the time. According to Agassi, his vision was inspired by a question asked by Klaus Schwab at the 2005 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland: "How do you make the world a better place by 2020?" As of January 2011 it had raised $700 million, and about a third was spent in setting up the battery switch stations. Also, several countries and states had offered tax breaks.
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Wikipedia