Better place battery exchange stations

To his delight, Haft discovered that Square also gave Compass the potential to reach out to both a small number of its most loyal customers as well as many, many would-be local coffee sippers. Annoyed with the most insistent emailers, I reached out to the sellers who reached out to me — except, as a reporter rather than as a customer — to figure out what was going on. I wanted to know how all these merchants had gotten my professional contact info.

Privacy experts said selling marketing information in this way clearly falls short of best privacy practices. Experts also told Protocol the situation seems to highlight how Block, as well as other payment processors and fintech platforms, operate in a bit of a privacy gray zone.

I paid with a personal card, and that transaction added my work address to my existing Square profile, which was in turn already linked with that card. That was all it took. As Haft discovered, Square provides those merchants the ability to manage their campaigns. It also takes its vast store of contact information — which a close reading of its terms of service reveals it collects from consumers who want a receipt sent to them — and gives smaller businesses access to those email and text inboxes.

That includes the ability to reach out to customers whose details the sellers never collected themselves. All Square needs is for the targeted customer to have made a purchase at some point from the merchant that wants to send that ad. Hence the state of my inbox.

That advertising network is indeed huge. Block disclosed in securities filings that it handled more than 3 billion card payments in and kept million consumer profiles — a major increase from more than 2 billion payments and million profiles in It serves everyone from parents running a local bake sale for the PTA to regional chains like Compass.

For a while, I ignored being a small part of that marketing edifice. Being alive in requires a certain tolerance for getting hit with ads, even from businesses you may not have given your information to in the first place. I spent some time quietly annoyed with the more persistent local shops. We do not have time or bandwidth to figure all of this out because it is not intuitive.

I saw that Square claimed, in the section that was devoted specifically to contact info, not to even know an email address for me, even though it was sending me ads there. The final detail is a network of charging stations that use proprietary robotics to swap battery trays when a car drives in, whether for a full swap in 10 minutes or a partial one in less time. Ample's proprietary robotic technology removes a battery tray from the array under a car.

Roadshow Ample's de Souza says this approach frees carmakers to do their own thing and let his company handle the business of designing and supporting swappable EV batteries within the carmaker's battery space. Ample's modular battery design also creates a granularity that makes battery repairs and upgrades much easier since an entire fixed 1,plus pound battery doesn't have to come out.

Ample is initially focused on installing its tech into high-utilization ride-share and corporate fleets so it expects to see each car at least once a week, creating a lot of natural opportunities for easy battery service. The battery modules left and tray r that are the essence of the way Ample can fits standardized swappable batteries into many EVs without them being reengineered to forced to share a battery design.

View Local Inventory Another benefit to an Ample swap station is reduced "teat time": A full battery swap should take 10 minutes or less, compared to a plug-in charge which can take 30 minutes to a few hours, not including the time an inattentive driver may leave their fully charged EV lingering in a public charging space. Is this driver waiting for his car to charge, or for someone else to move their fully charged car so he can charge his? Battery swap technology circumvents such concerns.

I will be interested to see how long and deep that welcome turns out to be: Batteries are the new engines and asking a carmaker to bend your way with theirs can be like asking Coke to tweak its recipe for your vending machine. Ample will need to convince manufacturers that its battery swaps are worthy of support and won't harm the carmakers' reputation at a time when all carmakers are trying to convince a largely skeptical public that EVs are as normal and reliable as combustion-engine cars.

Charging locations are typically seen as a thorny problem of both real estate and electrical infrastructure, but Ample says its technology relieves those pressures rather than exacerbating them. The company charges batteries at its swap stations using garden-variety Level II technology that's inexpensive and easy to provision, as EV technology goes.

Just as AOL was able to support tens of millions of dial-up users with far fewer modem ports than that, Ample will need to keenly predict demand to allow its minute turnaround with slower Level II charging.

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The Renault-Nissan Alliance is the first automaker with the vision and foresight to join them, building zero-emission electric cars for Better Place network infrastructure. They are talking with other major car manufacturers around the world about doing the same. These electric cars, sport utility vehicles and other models from leading manufacturers will look and perform much like what we drive today.

They will be subject to the same safety standards, but will not have tailpipes or generate harmful emissions. They are quieter, more efficient, and more reliable than gas-powered cars. For their part, they aim to accelerate the transformation to a sustainable electric solution. Battery Technology. The re-chargeable batteries that power Better Place electric cars have long been used in other industries, and are now ready for use in electric cars on a global scale.

In the last decade, the electrical power needs of laptop computers, mobile phones and power tools have driven advances in the efficiency and lifespan of lithium ion batteries. These advances have already been incorporated in the mass production of electric vehicle batteries. Today, rechargeable lithium ion batteries can reliably deliver driving distances of over miles on a single charge and replenish themselves at approximately one minute per minute of drive.

Better Place is building that infrastructure, an electric recharge grid. As batteries have become mass-produced for the electric car network, economies of scale have pushed costs down and continue to lead to more technical improvements.

This makes transportation as a sustainable service an even more affordable alternative to gas-based. A number of already successful lithium ion battery companies are in place to meet growing demand. Their first lithium-ion battery partners include Automotive Energy Supply Corp.

Better Place remains committed to a battery-agnostic approach that best serves this dynamic market. Battery Exchange Stations. In addition to widely deployed charge spots, the Better Place network will provide fully-automated battery exchange stations. These Better Place battery exchange stations are even more efficient and convenient than conventional gas stations. Each is roughly the size of your average living room. Like the charging spots, they are fully automated. A driver pulls in, puts the car in the neutral gear, and sits back.

The battery exchange station does all the work. The depleted battery is removed, and a fully-charged replacement is installed. In under three minutes, the car is back on the road. The battery exchange stations will be able to accommodate any Better Place-compliant vehicle. All manufactured batteries will be stocked so that any electric vehicle with a swappable battery, regardless of make or model, can pull in and be serviced. Charge Spots. Within a few short years, these units will be available for use in parking garages, retail spaces, street curbs, as well as within the homes of drivers everywhere you need them to be so that they can keep the batteries topped off.

But what will these charging spots look like, and how will they function? Each unit is about the same size as a standard parking meter. When an electric vehicle pulls up and parks, on-board software instructs the vehicle to link-up with the charging station until the battery is charged. All vehicles within the Better Place model will have the same plug that allows them to charge at these spots, regardless of the make, model or power requirements of the electric car being driven.

Cars outside the Better Place model can re-charge their batteries as guest vehicles, so long as the driver acquires an easily-installed converter. This allows for the growth and promotion of all zero-emission vehicles on the road, for the benefit of our health, planet and economies. The charge spots function at 3.

In terms of voltage, the trickle charge is the same as a standard wall outlet in a home. The units are perfectly safe, as they are designed to only interact with the vehicles equipped to link up with them, and are completely weather-proof. The change in landscape, when it occurs, will be striking. Gradually gas stations will transform into battery exchange stations. Electric charge spots will begin to sprout almost organically in and around our communities and places of business.

Renewable Energy. Switching cars from the pump to the plug will drastically reduce the amount of greenhouse gases that our society produces. Indeed, the Better Place model achieves more than just a reduction in pollution. They accelerate the widespread market adoption of renewable energy by creating new demand for it.

Electric vehicles need a recharge grid, and that grid needs to be continually primed with power provided by utility companies. In fact, leasing a Better Place car in Israel costs about 20 percent less than a Toyota Prius or Honda Insight hybrid, the company says. In his heyday, Agassi liked to tell people that Better Place would eventually be able to give cars away, and still turn a profit But such rosy projections never came close to materializing.

Local authorities, whose permission was needed to build battery-switching stations, put up unexpected roadblocks, slowing progress, company officials said. Another shortcoming: Better Place assumed that other automakers would build vehicles that are compatible with its battery-swapping technology, but so far only Renault has done so. Marketing has been another challenge: The company is asking its customers not only to embrace a new technology, but an unfamiliar business model that is hard to explain.

He said battery swapping might make sense for taxis or fleets, but not on a broad scale. My test drive with Better Place was a mixed bag. On the round trip from Tel Aviv to the Negev, I had to switch batteries twice, going slightly out of my way both times. On the plus side, the battery-switching station, which resembled an automated car wash, worked perfectly: I was in and out in about five minutes, without having to leave my car. And I loved the instant torque and the quiet of the Fluence EV.

Better Place customers seem to be satisfied, too. Although their numbers are small, electric vehicle owners worldwide are generally happy with the new technology. In the U. The Volt overcomes range anxiety by adding a small gasoline engine to its electric drive train, while the all-electric Nissan Leaf depends on a network of public charging stations.

All the companies offer home chargers to their owners. The company sold more than cars a month in January and February, accounting for about 0. In December, only 23 were sold. Others, though, say the Better Place story underscores the fundamental challenge facing the electric car.

Without battery-switching, pure electric cars have a limited range and they take a long time to recharge. But the administration, as well as the industry, has yet to provide a clear answer to a simple question about electric cars and companies like Better Place: What, exactly, is the consumer problem that EVs are trying to solve? Are they about saving money in the long run, not having to worry about rising gas prices, reducing the environmental impact of driving, or just enjoying the ride?

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