Better Place
Better battery financing for Better Place won't help most EVs
November 9, 2010: 12:45 PM ETBetter Place is working with GE to finance purchases of batteries for its switching stations and electric car system. But since most EVs come with the batteries built in, the financing won't be a panacea for the pricey new cars.
The electric vehicle industry's major hurdle these days is the exact same piece of hardware that's supposed to power it. Batteries for electric cars can cost up to $10,000 a piece. That's almost a third of the price of some of the new EVs -- like the Nissan Leaf -- that are starting to hit the market.
In this first round of electric vehicle rollout, manufacturers will most likely take a loss, thanks largely to the pricey battery. But that's not a concern for them right now -- Nissan, GM and the other electric manufacturers will benefit from rolling out electric cars even without profiting off of them immediately.
Carmakers probably won't sell huge numbers of new electric car models in the first five years anyway, according to a report from J.D. Power and Associates. With current technology, battery-fueled electric vehicles can cost up to two times as much as a comparable regular car. That higher cost significantly deters customers, according to the report, such that electric car sales won't live up to the hype when customers actually have to fork over more cash for smaller products. More
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Today in Tech: News around the Web
A round-up of the companies, deals, and trends that made headlines.
Every day, the Fortune staff spends hours poring over tech stories, posts, and reviews from all over the Web to keep tabs on the companies that matter. We've assembled the day's most newsworthy bits below.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg set the record straight about that potential "Facebook phone" during a MORE JP Mangalindan, Writer - Sep 23, 2010 7:30 AM ETPosted in: Adobe, AOL, Better Place, cloud computing, Dell, Facebook, Financial, Flipboard, GE, GigaOm, Halo, Mark Zuckeberg, Michael Dell, Mike Arrington, Mobile, Netflix, Nintendo, Samsung, T-Mobile, Tablets, Tim Armstrong, Twitter -
Electric car industry hitting the tipping point. For investors.
Venture capital firms are staking late stage electric car startups with huge cash to help them scale up and IPO
By Shelley DuBois, reporter
The age of the electric car is upon us, or so the numbers would suggest.
Companies in cleantech, especially those making cars, received over $400 million in funding in the second quarter of 2010, according to an Ernst & Young analysis based off of Dow Jones VentureSource data.
A company MORE
Aug 5, 2010 11:44 AM ETPosted in: Better Place, Dow Jones VentureSource, Eco Motors, electric vehicles, Ernst & Young, Fisker, NUMMI, Shai Agassi, Tesla -
The cleantech talent crunch
Lots of companies are focused on sustainability, but who will lead them?
By Neil Sims and Adrian Choo, Boyden
Going green has gone commercial. Environmental sustainability is no longer the exclusive purview of non-governmental organizations and policy wonks. Today a raft of young 'cleantech' companies is emerging to bring a wide range of green concepts to market in fields such as biofuels, solar, wind, biomass, tidal power generation, conservation and many other MORE
Dec 17, 2009 10:00 AM ET
