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Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech stuff from how

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Speaker 1: stuff Works dot com ky and welcome to text Stuff.

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Speaker 1: I'm Jonathan Strickland, and this week we have a guest host,

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Speaker 1: Ben Bolon of car stuff and Stuff they Don't Want

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Speaker 1: You to Know and brain stuff and other stuff. Lauren

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Speaker 1: is out this week, so Ben has kindly offered to

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Speaker 1: step in. So thank you very much, Ben. Oh, thank you.

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Speaker 1: This is uh, this is fantastic, big fan. Uh the

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Speaker 1: last time I was here, I used a joke longtime fan,

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Speaker 1: first time co host, and uh, we can't use that

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Speaker 1: one again. Yeah, but I'm doing that thing where you

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Speaker 1: just say it anyway. Um. Yeah, So thank you so

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Speaker 1: much for having me on the show, especially because this

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Speaker 1: is a topic that you hipped me too. And I think, um,

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Speaker 1: I think that this presents a fantastic cautionary tale, yes,

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Speaker 1: and a fantastic almost hariensic experience on our part. Yeah. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: What Ben is referring to is the topic better Place

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Speaker 1: a company that This was actually a request that a

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Speaker 1: listeners and in the listener Russell via email wrote in

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Speaker 1: and said it would be great if you could do

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Speaker 1: a podcast on a better Place electric car project. Following

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Speaker 1: up on your Tesla podcast. It would be interesting to

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Speaker 1: show the other approaches that are being tried around the world.

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Speaker 1: And before we get into this, I really want to

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Speaker 1: give a shout out to Max Chafkin, who wrote an

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Speaker 1: article for Fast Company. It's a phenomenal, phenomenal piece that

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Speaker 1: really details the entire life cycle of Better Place, which

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Speaker 1: it was not long. So, first of all, spoiler alert folks,

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Speaker 1: better better Place. Better Place has gone to a better place. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's gone somewhere for sure. And uh, it's it's strange

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Speaker 1: because I think that's such a fantastic name for a company.

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Speaker 1: It made me so sad, particularly considering what the whole

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Speaker 1: thrust of this company was. As Soul has already mentioned,

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Speaker 1: it has to do with electric vehicles. And the article

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Speaker 1: at Fast Company, by the way, if you ever want

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Speaker 1: to look it up, is called a Broken Place, the

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Speaker 1: spectacular failure of the startup that was going to change

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Speaker 1: the world. And really that is a pretty accurate assessment

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Speaker 1: of what went on. It's um, you know, it's unfortunate

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Speaker 1: because again, the the the premise, the whole purpose of

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Speaker 1: this company was a noble one, right, The idea of

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Speaker 1: creating an infrastructure for electric vehicles because one of the

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Speaker 1: things we talked about, and and Ben you've talked about

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Speaker 1: this a lot on car stuff, is how going to

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Speaker 1: an alternative fuel source is a huge, huge endeavor. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: because there's already such a massive conglomeration of sunk cost

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Speaker 1: in our current fuel sources. You know, the the idea

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Speaker 1: of uh rebuilding essentially an interstate system and and and

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Speaker 1: rebuilding every single gas station that we have, and just

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Speaker 1: think about how many gas stations you see in twenty

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Speaker 1: four hours and having having to make just even just

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Speaker 1: one gas station every fifty miles into an electric one

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Speaker 1: is a herculean endeavor. And I just want to put

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Speaker 1: in um put in one seed here. The reason you know,

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Speaker 1: you've heard this story about why they named this company

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Speaker 1: a Better Place, right, it's uh yeah, it's apparently it's

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Speaker 1: based on the founder Shy Augussi. Uh he had a

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Speaker 1: visit to the World Economic Forum Switzerland, you remember this. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: he went to that that forum, which was had a

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Speaker 1: whole bunch of young entrepreneurs obviously, and he started getting

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Speaker 1: interested in this idea of alternative fuel Yeah, yeah, absolutely,

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Speaker 1: and uh he there was a question asked by a

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Speaker 1: guy named Klaus Schwab there who said, how do you

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Speaker 1: make the world a better place by and uh, this

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Speaker 1: guy who would go on to found Better Place decided that,

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Speaker 1: you know, this would be my inspiration, right, and and

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Speaker 1: that led up to the origin of this origin of

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Speaker 1: this company. In two thousands seven, they publicly launched. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and I'm sorry, I guess I'm jumping over because we

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Speaker 1: should talk about their grandiose plan, right. Sure, But back

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Speaker 1: in two thousand five was when he went to this meeting,

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Speaker 1: and uh, you know, his his idea of a better

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Speaker 1: place was to get the world off of oil dependency.

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Speaker 1: And uh, one thing we have to point out is

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Speaker 1: shy Agassy came from Israel, and uh, and obviously if

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Speaker 1: you want to you have to look at politics as

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Speaker 1: part of this. It's not an economics. It's not just

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Speaker 1: the idea of a green movement, right, which was already

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Speaker 1: becoming a huge thing in the mid two thousand's. The

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Speaker 1: green technology was one of those kind of rising star

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Speaker 1: industries that idea that we should really invest in this

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Speaker 1: because it's the next big thing. Anyone who was paying

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Speaker 1: attention to tech in the mid two thousands, mid to

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Speaker 1: late two thousand's, you know that was like a buzzword

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Speaker 1: of buzzwords. Right. It's kind of faded since then, Not

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Speaker 1: that people are less interested in developing green technology, it's

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Speaker 1: just no longer this like for a while it was

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Speaker 1: a bandwagon thing, right. Yeah, that's that's a perfect way

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Speaker 1: to say it, because for for a number of years,

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Speaker 1: for a period of time, this would be something where

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Speaker 1: every company, every tech company especially had some sort of

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Speaker 1: green initiative, right, it was you were just supposed to

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Speaker 1: have one, you know. Yeah, And so shy Augussy was

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Speaker 1: really kind of jumping on this this momentum. Uh, and

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Speaker 1: he well, we'll be talking a lot about him in

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Speaker 1: this podcast and about how he kind of had these

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Speaker 1: grandiose ideas, Like you said, this grandiose plan, this enormous

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Speaker 1: kind of showman sort of persona, very P. T. Barnum,

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Speaker 1: very Elon Musk in many ways, will be will be

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Speaker 1: kind of comparing him and contrasting him with Elon Musk

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Speaker 1: as well, because there's another guy who very similar in

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Speaker 1: that he went with electric vehicles as his as one

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Speaker 1: of his big initiatives and is definitely a market marketing genius,

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Speaker 1: very type a personality, very charismatic, but also can rub

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Speaker 1: people the wrong way. You know, he's he's got a

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Speaker 1: very specific vision and if you don't fall in line

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Speaker 1: with it, there can be lots of friction. Well so

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Speaker 1: is shy Agassie. But I guess he perhaps had a

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Speaker 1: less um strategic approach, a methodical Yeah. So that grandiose

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Speaker 1: plan was to be able to come up with a

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Speaker 1: system and infrastructure that would support a fleet of electric vehicles,

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Speaker 1: where in ideal situations, you could get an entire country,

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Speaker 1: in this case Israel, to switch from gasoline powered vehicles

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Speaker 1: to electric vehicles. Uh. And I mean it was he

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Speaker 1: he was starting to make promises before there was any

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Speaker 1: kind of idea of a company, let alone a business plan,

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Speaker 1: Like there wasn't even there wasn't even a thing to

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Speaker 1: have a business plan yet, and he was already starting

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Speaker 1: to make these sort of big promises. Um. He and

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Speaker 1: another guy uh started to think up, Uh, you know what,

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Speaker 1: how could we how can we create a proposal for this?

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Speaker 1: And that other guy would be Um Andresor, who was

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Speaker 1: CEO of a company called Bioprocessors, And they wrote a

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Speaker 1: white paper called Transforming Global Transportation, which became kind of

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Speaker 1: a rock star white paper at various conferences around the world. Right, like,

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Speaker 1: of course you've read Transforming Global Transportation, And even people

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Speaker 1: who used to work for Better Lace are still like,

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Speaker 1: even after all the the crazy kind of roller coaster

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Speaker 1: events that they've gone through, and even uh, even after

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Speaker 1: the ones who will say, like you, I guess it

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Speaker 1: kind of went off the reservation, Uh, they will still

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Speaker 1: cite this paper as being an inspirational paper. So it's

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Speaker 1: not that necessarily the ideas were bad. It's just a

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Speaker 1: question whether or not they were actionable and the way

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Speaker 1: that the Better Place went about it, right, the application

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Speaker 1: of of these ideas, And you know, I'm I'm just

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Speaker 1: gonna get on one little soapbox here, Jonathan. It's true

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Speaker 1: that the state of global transportation and the state of

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Speaker 1: global energy supply is ultimately the way it's going now.

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Speaker 1: It's unsustainable, and sure, it's it's not gonna be a

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Speaker 1: perpetual motion machine, and it's it can be often politically

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Speaker 1: charged for people to say that, but especially as you

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Speaker 1: and I were talking about off air earlier, especially in

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Speaker 1: the case of Israel, neighbor neighbor, too many uh nations

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Speaker 1: with which it has at best, and a sense of

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Speaker 1: animosity right there there's certainly huge amounts of conflict between

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Speaker 1: Israel and a lot of oil producing nations. So Israel

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Speaker 1: has some very politically motivated reasons to get off of

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Speaker 1: the dependency on oil. The United States is not that

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Speaker 1: much different in many ways. If you look back to

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Speaker 1: the proposals under the the Bush administration about moving to

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Speaker 1: a hydrogen based economy, one of the big incentives was

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Speaker 1: for uh, for for this this national security reason to

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Speaker 1: get off of the dependency for oil. And so it's

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Speaker 1: not just this environmental approach, although that's largely the way

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Speaker 1: Better Place was positioned because it's it's a feel good

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Speaker 1: way of saying, hey, this is an impor and technology

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Speaker 1: to invest in, but from a uh, you know, just

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Speaker 1: a national security standpoint, it also had real importance. So

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Speaker 1: this is something we have to address because otherwise no

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Speaker 1: one would have sunk money into this this venture. And

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Speaker 1: as it turns out, people sunk a lot of money

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Speaker 1: into it. Oh yeah, let's see. So the first the

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Speaker 1: first round, because it was first, they got a hundred

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Speaker 1: million from one investor alone, just a hundred million, plus

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Speaker 1: thirty million of his own particular his own fund, so

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Speaker 1: a hundred million from his company and thirty million more

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Speaker 1: from him, and then ultimately they raised another two hundred million.

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Speaker 1: So I think you you know, some reports say two

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Speaker 1: hundred fifty million. Ultimately you're looking around three hundred million

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Speaker 1: in that initial funding round, and that is a lot

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Speaker 1: of money, don't know if you realize this. Yeah. So,

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Speaker 1: so one of the reasons we can talk about, uh,

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Speaker 1: this being a great case study is that if you

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Speaker 1: look at the dot com era, the dot com bubble burst,

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Speaker 1: one of the things that that people bring up over

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Speaker 1: and over is how these companies that didn't have any

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Speaker 1: sort of way of generating revenue, they had no product,

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Speaker 1: yet we're getting crazy amounts of venture capital early, early,

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Speaker 1: early in their phase in their life cycle, and it

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Speaker 1: meant that you had people with tons of capital, were

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Speaker 1: burned through and no real incentive to rain all that

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Speaker 1: in and take a very methodical and and conservative approach

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Speaker 1: to building a business plan. Yeah. I think that's a

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Speaker 1: really good point because in when you first brought up

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Speaker 1: this idea, this this seems like such a fantastic comparison. Now,

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Speaker 1: of course it's not exactly apples to apples, but but

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Speaker 1: with so much money to to have all of this

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Speaker 1: cash and none of the focus required the strategy right.

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Speaker 1: If you had a smaller investment, then you would be

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Speaker 1: forced to focus on how do you how do you

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Speaker 1: bring about this idea of creating a an infrastructure that

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Speaker 1: will support electric vehicles throughout an entire nation. You know,

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Speaker 1: if you have a limited budget, then you have to say,

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Speaker 1: all right, we can't do everything, so let's focus on

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Speaker 1: what we can do and prioritize what we can do,

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Speaker 1: and that way we can really focus, be really really careful,

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Speaker 1: and we can build incrementally. When you get this huge investment,

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Speaker 1: then you think, hey, we can do everything. So let's

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Speaker 1: let's do you know, let's have first of all, let's

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Speaker 1: have crazy amenities. You know, let's let's do that startup

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Speaker 1: thing where you have the uh the headquarters office that

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Speaker 1: has all the bells and whistles. Yeah, yeah, exactly, that

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Speaker 1: kind of thing, the the infinity swimming pool that's in

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Speaker 1: the executive lounge, that kind of musical guests, yes, you

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Speaker 1: know who knows, uh, we do. We will talk more

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Speaker 1: about that a little bit late or two. Not the

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Speaker 1: musical guest part, beside the crazy amenities. And it just

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Speaker 1: meant that you lacked that focus and that was probably

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Speaker 1: one of the many reasons because this this is a

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Speaker 1: complex issue. It's not like you can point at one

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Speaker 1: thing and say this is the reason this ultimately failed.

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Speaker 1: That's yeah, that's that's an excellent point too, because one

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Speaker 1: of the one of the valuable things that a dissection

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Speaker 1: of this situation does is it helps give us a

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Speaker 1: behind the curtain look at why so many similar companies

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Speaker 1: fail or succeed. And and when we look at when

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Speaker 1: we look at a lot of these companies, here's the

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Speaker 1: thing that gets me. Um. One thing a lot of

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Speaker 1: companies have in common with this, whether it's auto or

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Speaker 1: just pure tech, is that there is very easily a

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Speaker 1: cult of personality that forms. Yes, yes, as I mean,

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Speaker 1: we see that in over and over again, right uh.

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Speaker 1: And it depends on the personality how that cult ends

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Speaker 1: up kind of being uh projected, like how how the

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Speaker 1: fans fall in line, because you could say that about

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Speaker 1: Bill Gates, could certainly say that about Steve Jobs Elon

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Speaker 1: Musk very very similar. So you can see this over

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Speaker 1: and over. Not every company has like the figurehead that

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Speaker 1: people identify around. Sometimes it's more around a brand and

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Speaker 1: not a person, but you still get this kind of

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Speaker 1: cult of personality. It is just depending on whether or

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Speaker 1: not it it forms around an individual or around just

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Speaker 1: a brand identity. Now, we haven't really talked about what

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Speaker 1: they had planned on doing, and that's largely because they

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Speaker 1: didn't have a really firm um plan in place until

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Speaker 1: after the company itself had formed. Now the company formed

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Speaker 1: in two thousand seven, and generally speaking, the plan was

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Speaker 1: to seek out government subsidies and tax incentives to try

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Speaker 1: and develop a positive environment for electric vehicles, and that

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Speaker 1: Better Place would partner car manufacturers to develop cars that

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Speaker 1: would be electric, that would have specific types of battery

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Speaker 1: packs that would be compatible with what Better Place would provide,

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Speaker 1: which would be charging stations and battery swapping stations. So

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Speaker 1: the idea would be, if you bought a car that

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Speaker 1: was compatible with Better Places stations, you would be able

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Speaker 1: to recharge there and get your battery swapped out for

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Speaker 1: a subscription fee. This, this to me, was fascinating, this

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Speaker 1: idea that that Agassi had of how about we create

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Speaker 1: a company that's similar to cell phones. Yeah, you buy

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Speaker 1: a you buy a package and a service, right, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: you get a subsidized car that would be like a

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Speaker 1: subsidized cell phone. This would be like the way cell

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Speaker 1: phone plans traditionally have been in the United States. It's

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Speaker 1: not like that all around the world. You know, there's

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Speaker 1: some places in the world where you buy the unsubsidized

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Speaker 1: phone full price, but then your monthly service services are

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Speaker 1: less than what do we get in the US. In

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Speaker 1: the US, you buy a subsidized phone, but then you're

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Speaker 1: under contract for you know, usually two years is typical,

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Speaker 1: and you get you know, you're paying for that really

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Speaker 1: in those those fees month to month as opposed to

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Speaker 1: buying it all up front. Well, he was talking about

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Speaker 1: doing a similar thing with cars, where your purchase price

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Speaker 1: for a car would be lower. He was saying at

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Speaker 1: the time Agassy that the electric vehicles would be about

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Speaker 1: half of what you would get for a uh comparable

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Speaker 1: gasoline powered car, which had other experts in the field

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Speaker 1: scratching their heads and say, say, what, how are you

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Speaker 1: making this promise? How can you promise to produce an

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Speaker 1: electric vehicle for that low because we're building electric vehicles

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Speaker 1: and it is expensive. Yeah, even if you build them

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Speaker 1: like gangbusters. That's the thing that's something that even Ellen

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Speaker 1: Musk has not reached yet. The economy of scale, right yeah.

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Speaker 1: He His for approach was to go with let's build

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Speaker 1: the sexiest electric vehicle we can, which was the Tesla Roadster.

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Speaker 1: And sure enough, there are people who are like, man,

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Speaker 1: that thing just looks like it looks like it's fast

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Speaker 1: when it's standing still. Yeah, let's have celebrities drive it,

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Speaker 1: Let's have let's have people, let's influence the influencers. Right,

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Speaker 1: so we're getting people who are not just celebrities but

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Speaker 1: also business leaders, particularly since they were catering mainly to

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Speaker 1: San Francisco, they were getting all the other tech company leaders,

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Speaker 1: you know, like Google for example, getting really interested in

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Speaker 1: these vehicles. And then they said, what we'll do is

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Speaker 1: will continue to court the high end market. At first,

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Speaker 1: We'll use that money to build out an infrastructure, supercharging stations,

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Speaker 1: things like that. That's what you're starting to see now

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Speaker 1: with the super charging stations being built across the United States.

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Speaker 1: Even in states where it is not currently legal to

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Speaker 1: buy a vehicle, you have to leave the state to

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Speaker 1: buy it. It's not that it's illegal to drive it.

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Speaker 1: It's perfectly legal to drive the vehicles. But because of

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Speaker 1: you know, that's an entirely different episode, but because of

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Speaker 1: issues with car dealerships because Tesla they sell the cars direct,

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Speaker 1: right direct to the customer, unlike all other auto manufacturers

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Speaker 1: that go through dealerships. Right, the big three give wholesale

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Speaker 1: to a dealership who then sells to the end user.

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Speaker 1: With with Tesla, you're right, that is ah, that is

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Speaker 1: a different bag of badgers or a box of circuits.

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Speaker 1: But um, but it is really important to say because

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Speaker 1: I think that's a brilliant comparison. When we look at this,

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Speaker 1: if we compare better Place and Tesla, one of the

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Speaker 1: big big differences, right, maybe I would submit to you

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Speaker 1: the biggest difference is that Tesla said one car, make

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Speaker 1: it awesome, top of the market, and then baby steps

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Speaker 1: and and better Place. Their approach was, let's try and

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Speaker 1: aim for the moderate car, the basic car market, trying

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Speaker 1: to hit at your average consumer, right, go for that person,

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Speaker 1: and then you will end up just just hitting that

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Speaker 1: across the entire market, which in this case really was Israel,

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Speaker 1: like we were saying before, although there were plans, grandiose

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Speaker 1: plans again to immediately expand in other markets like Denmark

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Speaker 1: in Australia. Those were the three original ones Israel, Denmark,

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Speaker 1: Australia and with more plans of expanding into the United

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Speaker 1: States and other countries as well. Now you you also

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Speaker 1: had you had also mentioned before. This is good because

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Speaker 1: when we talk about the cult of personality and the beginning,

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Speaker 1: people really on board with better place. And he even

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Speaker 1: um he even made an appearance at TED conference. Right

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Speaker 1: in two thousand nine, he took the stage at TED conference.

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Speaker 1: He laid us plan of selling millions of electronic vehicles

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Speaker 1: in Israel. He supported it with this idea of the infrastructure.

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Speaker 1: They wanted to make the charging stations in the battery

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Speaker 1: swapping stations. And you know, it was a compel argument,

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Speaker 1: the idea of look, we're not saying build an electric

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Speaker 1: vehicle with no support. We're saying, let's partner with electrical

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Speaker 1: vehicles like some manufacturers, uh, and partner with them to

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Speaker 1: produce vehicles. Will also produce the infrastructure by building out

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Speaker 1: these charging stations and battery swapping stations, and then there'll

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Speaker 1: be no excuse to not swap over. You just tell

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Speaker 1: the customer, hey, look, it's a cheap vehicle because we're

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Speaker 1: subsidizing it. It's lower than your car. Note if you

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Speaker 1: bought a gas vehicle, yeah, you don't have to you'll

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Speaker 1: have a subscription where you'll end up paying a certain

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Speaker 1: amount per month, but look, it's going to be lower

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Speaker 1: than your gas bill would be like to to pay

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Speaker 1: for the fuel to fuel your car, right, and you'll

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Speaker 1: even be able to charge it at home. I mean,

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Speaker 1: think about some of the promises were crazy, Like you

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Speaker 1: could have a basic charging cable installed in your house

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Speaker 1: for free, or you could pay five bucks and get

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Speaker 1: a robot automated charging station you pull. Imagine pulling into

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Speaker 1: your garage and a robotic arm jets and style plugs

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Speaker 1: into your vehicle without you having to do anything else.

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Speaker 1: And that's just five hundred bucks a five dollar installation

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Speaker 1: fee to have a fully automated robot arm doing this perfectly.

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Speaker 1: And this had people excited at ted. I mean they

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Speaker 1: got like one of the crazy super long standing ovation.

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Speaker 1: Whereas you had probably a few people in that audience,

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Speaker 1: I would imagine a few people who might have had

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Speaker 1: I don't know, some experience with robotics, let's say experts. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: people who perhaps worked in the auto industry. Those folks

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Speaker 1: were probably still sitting in their chairs thinking, hang on,

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Speaker 1: how can you promise this this free cable installation when

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Speaker 1: something like that has real cost. I mean, that's incredibly

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Speaker 1: expensive to put in by itself, let alone a robotic

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Speaker 1: one that is fully automated. And you know, you that's

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Speaker 1: so much research and development to test a system like that,

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Speaker 1: To build a system, test it, make sure that it

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Speaker 1: works properly. You don't want to have, you know, a

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Speaker 1: robot arm that's just blindly trying to plug in a

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Speaker 1: cable and scratching up your vehicle. It's trying to charge

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Speaker 1: your cat. Yes, exactly right. You know the next thing,

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Speaker 1: you know, Fluffy's got a couple hundred volts running through her.

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Speaker 1: That's not that's not good business, right, Well, yeah, absolutely,

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Speaker 1: And even if we look at it from the angle

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Speaker 1: of the proprietary nature, which is another sticky thing in

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Speaker 1: these kind of private public partnerships. Right, you're the idea

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Speaker 1: of sure, you can buy this vehicle from this manufacturer

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Speaker 1: and you can charge it at these stations, But if

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Speaker 1: you buy an electric vehicle from any other manufacturer, it's

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Speaker 1: not compatible with these charging stations. See that's all right, ben.

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Speaker 1: Let me ask you this. Let's say that you, as

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Speaker 1: a consumer, go to an auto dealership and you're looking

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Speaker 1: at a line of let's say it's a used car dealership.

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Speaker 1: Even sound because now you're talking about all sorts of

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Speaker 1: different auto manufacturers being represented on this one lot, right,

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Speaker 1: Because otherwise, if you go to a dealership, you're looking

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Speaker 1: at like a you know, let's say it's a Toyota dealership,

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Speaker 1: they're all Toyota vehicles. But if you go to a

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Speaker 1: used car dealership, you might see Toyota's, you might see

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Speaker 1: you know, cars from General Motors, you might see cars

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Speaker 1: from Forward, you might you know, all of those could

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Speaker 1: be represented in a big used car lot. If you

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Speaker 1: buy a gas powered vehicle and then you need to

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Speaker 1: refuel your vehicle, Um, do you have to worry about

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Speaker 1: what kind of fueling station you pull into in general? Now,

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Speaker 1: because any fueling station you go to is going to

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Speaker 1: have fuel pumps that fit all cars because that's standardized. Right. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: So you don't have to worry, Like if you bought

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Speaker 1: a car from Toyota, or you bought a car from Ford,

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Speaker 1: or you bought a car from anywhere else that was

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Speaker 1: a gasoline powered vehicle, then any gas station you pull

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Speaker 1: into you can be confident the gas pumps are compatible

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Speaker 1: with your car. But now, let's say you on an

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Speaker 1: electric vehicle. Let's say it's a Tesla, for example, And

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Speaker 1: let's say that there are other cars like Better Place.

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Speaker 1: Let's say the Better Place also had cars out on

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Speaker 1: the market. Now you've got a vehicle that has a

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Speaker 1: proprietary port that you have to plug into, which means

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Speaker 1: that only certain types of plugs are going to fit

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Speaker 1: your vehicle and others will not. Now you have to

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Speaker 1: worry about where you can go to recharge your vehicle. Now,

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Speaker 1: most of these electric vehicles are going to have some

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Speaker 1: sort of of plug in to it so that you

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Speaker 1: can go into a an electric vehicle charging station and

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Speaker 1: have some kind of standardized approach. But if you want

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Speaker 1: a supercharger like the Tesla supercharge approach, that's proprietary. And

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Speaker 1: that's also the one that will give you a half

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Speaker 1: charge of your vehicle in twenty minutes, which is still

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Speaker 1: crazy science fiction stuff to me. Man. Yeah, And and

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Speaker 1: although it's crazy science fiction stuff, if you're a motorist

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Speaker 1: and you are on your way from point A to

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Speaker 1: point B, the thought of spending twenty minutes to get

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Speaker 1: a half charge on your vehicle, it's probably probably something

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Speaker 1: you're not crazy about. Forget the fact that you're probably

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Speaker 1: gonna go way further than you necessarily need to on

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Speaker 1: a half charge. Right, You're you're driving range these days

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Speaker 1: is pretty decent um from just a a an idea

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Speaker 1: of I have to stop and refuel my vehicle. That's

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Speaker 1: not a very attractive proposition, right. Yeah. One of the

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Speaker 1: one of the great buzzwords for that is range anxiety, yes,

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Speaker 1: which was one of the things that Better Place was

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Speaker 1: trying to address. Right. They were saying that by building

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Speaker 1: out this infrastructure throughout an entire country and to allow

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Speaker 1: the battery swapping, which was a big one them. Tesla's

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Speaker 1: also looking into that as well. Uh, it means that

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Speaker 1: you would take away this range anxiety, right because you

430
00:25:52,680 --> 00:25:54,760
Speaker 1: could just pull into one of these stations, and because

431
00:25:54,800 --> 00:25:57,720
Speaker 1: you have put them throughout the entire country, you could

432
00:25:57,720 --> 00:26:00,960
Speaker 1: swap it out. However, again, if you wanted to ever

433
00:26:01,200 --> 00:26:04,560
Speaker 1: have as a consumer the freedom of choice to buy

434
00:26:04,600 --> 00:26:07,440
Speaker 1: a different electric vehicle, you can't avail yourself to those

435
00:26:07,520 --> 00:26:10,600
Speaker 1: kind of stations because they're not compatible. Nope, you have

436
00:26:10,680 --> 00:26:14,560
Speaker 1: to hope somebody makes an adapter at best or that

437
00:26:14,680 --> 00:26:17,760
Speaker 1: they build out comparable stations so that you end up

438
00:26:17,760 --> 00:26:20,439
Speaker 1: having these side by side, Like, I can imagine a

439
00:26:20,480 --> 00:26:24,119
Speaker 1: refueling station where all right, here's where Tesla drivers have

440
00:26:24,160 --> 00:26:26,520
Speaker 1: to pull in. Here's where Better Place drivers would have

441
00:26:26,560 --> 00:26:29,240
Speaker 1: had to have pulled in had that actually continue to work.

442
00:26:29,359 --> 00:26:31,800
Speaker 1: Here's here's another thing. Now there's a bit of a tangent.

443
00:26:31,880 --> 00:26:34,159
Speaker 1: So so forgive me on this, sure, but can you

444
00:26:34,280 --> 00:26:40,000
Speaker 1: imagine how how angry you would be if you did

445
00:26:40,080 --> 00:26:43,560
Speaker 1: something that was like the equivalent of jail breaking your

446
00:26:44,280 --> 00:26:48,560
Speaker 1: your Better Place vehicle and then it got bricked. Can

447
00:26:48,600 --> 00:26:51,200
Speaker 1: you imagine breaking a car right to the point where

448
00:26:51,200 --> 00:26:53,359
Speaker 1: you can no longer charge it? And yeah, that would

449
00:26:53,400 --> 00:26:57,480
Speaker 1: be And if we're talking about a model that's similar

450
00:26:57,480 --> 00:27:00,200
Speaker 1: to cell phones, this is not something that's out side

451
00:27:00,240 --> 00:27:04,080
Speaker 1: the realm of possible. So this is disturbingly possible or

452
00:27:04,440 --> 00:27:06,840
Speaker 1: or it was. Now one thing I want to go

453
00:27:06,880 --> 00:27:10,200
Speaker 1: back to you said earlier. Um, you made the great

454
00:27:10,240 --> 00:27:13,960
Speaker 1: point that is another thing different to the Tesla model,

455
00:27:14,119 --> 00:27:17,479
Speaker 1: which is the Better Place wanted a network of cars

456
00:27:17,560 --> 00:27:20,480
Speaker 1: that people could choose from, sort of like how if

457
00:27:20,520 --> 00:27:24,280
Speaker 1: you want an iPhone with Apple, then all you do,

458
00:27:24,320 --> 00:27:26,280
Speaker 1: all you can do is buy some kind of iPhone.

459
00:27:26,359 --> 00:27:28,520
Speaker 1: But what they wanted to do is be more of

460
00:27:28,560 --> 00:27:32,040
Speaker 1: an Android to Tesla's Apple, right, you could buy any

461
00:27:32,080 --> 00:27:35,520
Speaker 1: one of a number of cars. However, it didn't work

462
00:27:35,520 --> 00:27:38,800
Speaker 1: out that way, did it. There was only one manufacturer

463
00:27:38,960 --> 00:27:40,840
Speaker 1: that Better Place was able to work with in the

464
00:27:40,960 --> 00:27:44,320
Speaker 1: history of better Place being around. Better Place was around

465
00:27:44,320 --> 00:27:48,360
Speaker 1: from two thousand seven to two and the only manufacturer,

466
00:27:48,400 --> 00:27:52,160
Speaker 1: and at bed please correct me if you know the pronunciation,

467
00:27:52,160 --> 00:27:57,240
Speaker 1: and I screw it up Renault renew See. I, being

468
00:27:57,560 --> 00:28:00,360
Speaker 1: first of all, being American, I'm ignorant. Second all, being

469
00:28:00,359 --> 00:28:04,840
Speaker 1: a non driver, I'm also doubly ignorant. So Renault Renault,

470
00:28:04,880 --> 00:28:07,920
Speaker 1: which I should have guessed based upon the spelling. Renault

471
00:28:08,000 --> 00:28:11,320
Speaker 1: was the only manufacturer with which Better Place was able

472
00:28:11,359 --> 00:28:15,360
Speaker 1: to form a relationship in its brief existence. And there

473
00:28:15,400 --> 00:28:18,480
Speaker 1: was really only one vehicle that was produced yet, the

474
00:28:18,640 --> 00:28:22,120
Speaker 1: Fluence ze UH. And this was a new vehicle too,

475
00:28:22,240 --> 00:28:27,200
Speaker 1: because it better Place predates the Renault UH. This Fluence

476
00:28:27,240 --> 00:28:30,359
Speaker 1: at least UH that came out in two thousand nine.

477
00:28:30,800 --> 00:28:33,720
Speaker 1: And it's not a bad car, man. It's got a

478
00:28:34,160 --> 00:28:37,480
Speaker 1: it's got a twenty two kilowatt lithium I am battery

479
00:28:37,960 --> 00:28:42,280
Speaker 1: it um. It's range UH is a hundred fifteen miles

480
00:28:42,280 --> 00:28:45,239
Speaker 1: for you and I or for the rest of the world,

481
00:28:47,360 --> 00:28:51,360
Speaker 1: and uh this, you know, this seems like a pretty

482
00:28:51,400 --> 00:28:56,080
Speaker 1: good car to use. Um it's still you know, it's

483
00:28:56,120 --> 00:28:59,480
Speaker 1: still around. You can you can still buy them. They're

484
00:28:59,480 --> 00:29:03,040
Speaker 1: still being maid in uh South Korea, and the ones

485
00:29:03,080 --> 00:29:05,720
Speaker 1: they think made in Israel were are the ones used

486
00:29:05,760 --> 00:29:10,080
Speaker 1: in Israel rather were made in Turkey. So so it's

487
00:29:10,200 --> 00:29:13,160
Speaker 1: it's a legit vehicle. Yeah. The only issue here is

488
00:29:13,160 --> 00:29:16,000
Speaker 1: that now better place no longer has those battery swapping stations.

489
00:29:16,080 --> 00:29:18,920
Speaker 1: They still have some charging stations. We'll talk about that

490
00:29:18,960 --> 00:29:20,600
Speaker 1: when we get towards the end of the podcast. But

491
00:29:21,400 --> 00:29:23,560
Speaker 1: the you know it was it was one of those

492
00:29:23,600 --> 00:29:25,840
Speaker 1: things where if if it had worked, you would have

493
00:29:25,880 --> 00:29:28,200
Speaker 1: had a battery swapping station be able to swap out

494
00:29:28,240 --> 00:29:30,760
Speaker 1: in five minutes. And if you had a subscription where

495
00:29:30,760 --> 00:29:34,200
Speaker 1: you're not paying on that per swap, there's no incentive

496
00:29:34,240 --> 00:29:36,760
Speaker 1: for you to not swap out the battery, right if

497
00:29:36,760 --> 00:29:40,280
Speaker 1: it's covered under your subscription that that you're that comes

498
00:29:40,320 --> 00:29:43,120
Speaker 1: along with buying one of these vehicles. Then you drive in,

499
00:29:43,200 --> 00:29:45,440
Speaker 1: you have your battery swapped out. Takes maybe five minutes,

500
00:29:45,440 --> 00:29:47,280
Speaker 1: but that's about the same amount of time you'd spend

501
00:29:47,280 --> 00:29:51,840
Speaker 1: at a typical fueling station, yes, which goes exactly to um.

502
00:29:51,880 --> 00:29:55,000
Speaker 1: It goes exactly to the fantastic point you made there

503
00:29:55,040 --> 00:29:59,960
Speaker 1: about the difference with You know, no matter how amaze

504
00:30:00,000 --> 00:30:02,400
Speaker 1: seemed from a technical standpoint, it is to charge a

505
00:30:02,440 --> 00:30:05,320
Speaker 1: battery in a half charge of battery in twenty minutes,

506
00:30:05,880 --> 00:30:08,320
Speaker 1: it's still it's still a huge downer when you think, man,

507
00:30:08,400 --> 00:30:11,400
Speaker 1: if I had just had an internal combustion engine, I

508
00:30:11,400 --> 00:30:14,120
Speaker 1: could be on my way already, exactly right. And keep

509
00:30:14,160 --> 00:30:17,120
Speaker 1: in mind, you know, this is also trying to be

510
00:30:17,200 --> 00:30:21,360
Speaker 1: a very special case, right because, as as studies have shown,

511
00:30:21,720 --> 00:30:24,719
Speaker 1: your typical driver, at least in the United States, drives

512
00:30:24,720 --> 00:30:28,720
Speaker 1: at most around forty eight miles in a day. All right, Well,

513
00:30:28,760 --> 00:30:31,920
Speaker 1: if you're driving ranges a hundred and fifteen miles, then

514
00:30:32,000 --> 00:30:34,920
Speaker 1: you you have got that more than covered, which means

515
00:30:34,920 --> 00:30:36,320
Speaker 1: that all you have to do is just remember to

516
00:30:36,320 --> 00:30:38,080
Speaker 1: plug your car in at the end of the day

517
00:30:38,360 --> 00:30:40,320
Speaker 1: and it'll be fully ready for the next day. You

518
00:30:40,360 --> 00:30:43,160
Speaker 1: don't have to worry about that range anxiety really kicking

519
00:30:43,160 --> 00:30:45,800
Speaker 1: in because you've got more than enough capacity. It's when

520
00:30:45,800 --> 00:30:49,200
Speaker 1: you're doing something special, like a long range trip. Let's

521
00:30:49,240 --> 00:30:52,560
Speaker 1: say that we're decided we've we're gonna go to Disneyland.

522
00:30:52,600 --> 00:30:57,120
Speaker 1: We're doing a cross country drive to go to uh Anaheim, California.

523
00:30:57,400 --> 00:30:59,160
Speaker 1: You and I always talk about that, I mean in

524
00:30:59,200 --> 00:31:01,760
Speaker 1: my head, you know, was because you know, fall is

525
00:31:01,800 --> 00:31:04,160
Speaker 1: coming around, and fall that's when they do the Haunted

526
00:31:04,200 --> 00:31:07,320
Speaker 1: Mansion overlay with Nightmare before Christmas, which of course you

527
00:31:07,360 --> 00:31:10,400
Speaker 1: and I both would really left to go on, you know,

528
00:31:10,480 --> 00:31:13,200
Speaker 1: and we gotta go together because that's spooky. Man, you

529
00:31:13,240 --> 00:31:16,360
Speaker 1: don't want to go by yourself. Um. But yeah, if

530
00:31:16,360 --> 00:31:18,880
Speaker 1: we wanted to do a cross country trip, then clearly

531
00:31:18,920 --> 00:31:21,360
Speaker 1: we would need that infrastructure there in order for us

532
00:31:21,400 --> 00:31:24,480
Speaker 1: because we're gonna go so far in a day that

533
00:31:24,600 --> 00:31:28,320
Speaker 1: you could conceivably go beyond that driving range easily conceivably

534
00:31:28,720 --> 00:31:32,200
Speaker 1: hundred and fifteen miles certainly, because uh, you know, it's

535
00:31:32,200 --> 00:31:33,800
Speaker 1: not like we're gonna drive a hundred miles and then

536
00:31:33,800 --> 00:31:35,960
Speaker 1: spend the night and then another hundred miles that's gonna

537
00:31:36,000 --> 00:31:38,320
Speaker 1: take us forever to get out there, right. Yeah, So

538
00:31:38,520 --> 00:31:41,800
Speaker 1: that's a really good point. So this this idea works, um,

539
00:31:41,880 --> 00:31:46,640
Speaker 1: you know, it works in theory. Yeah, And what I

540
00:31:46,680 --> 00:31:51,240
Speaker 1: gotta ask you, man, what happened? Yeah, you know what happened.

541
00:31:51,320 --> 00:31:54,440
Speaker 1: It's actually a laundry list of problems. Sorry. Ultimately, we're

542
00:31:54,440 --> 00:31:57,720
Speaker 1: getting to May two thousand thirteen, when the company had

543
00:31:57,840 --> 00:32:01,160
Speaker 1: declared bankruptcy and ended up being sold for pittance. So

544
00:32:01,200 --> 00:32:03,600
Speaker 1: it raised about a billion dollars a little less more like,

545
00:32:03,640 --> 00:32:05,760
Speaker 1: you know, somewhere between nine million and a billion, but

546
00:32:05,880 --> 00:32:10,480
Speaker 1: it counts between friends, right, it was it was auctioned off.

547
00:32:10,520 --> 00:32:13,479
Speaker 1: It's such a fraction of that. If you add up everything,

548
00:32:13,520 --> 00:32:16,600
Speaker 1: including the assets of the company and its intellectual property,

549
00:32:16,680 --> 00:32:21,640
Speaker 1: it's about twelve million dollars. That's that's a huge, huge

550
00:32:21,680 --> 00:32:24,680
Speaker 1: insult there in a way, I mean, not even insulting.

551
00:32:24,680 --> 00:32:26,720
Speaker 1: It was just sad. Right, Yeah, it's a it's a

552
00:32:26,760 --> 00:32:29,760
Speaker 1: fire sale because of the first question you have to

553
00:32:29,800 --> 00:32:33,280
Speaker 1: ask is what happened to all of this money? It

554
00:32:33,320 --> 00:32:36,880
Speaker 1: didn't evaporate, surely. Yeah. The thing that happened was that

555
00:32:37,760 --> 00:32:44,120
Speaker 1: costs were h we're greatly beyond what was anticipated, and

556
00:32:44,200 --> 00:32:47,480
Speaker 1: the build times were greatly beyond what was anticipated. So

557
00:32:47,720 --> 00:32:50,000
Speaker 1: costs end up spiraling out of control. And they just

558
00:32:50,080 --> 00:32:54,240
Speaker 1: weren't good at at They weren't very good ministers of

559
00:32:54,280 --> 00:32:56,760
Speaker 1: the money, the capital that they had. So first of all,

560
00:32:56,840 --> 00:32:58,840
Speaker 1: let's let's talk about some of the stuff. The building

561
00:32:58,840 --> 00:33:03,680
Speaker 1: out that infrastructure incredibly expensive. They had guests that a

562
00:33:03,920 --> 00:33:07,840
Speaker 1: typical charging station would cost about five thousand dollars. Later

563
00:33:07,920 --> 00:33:09,520
Speaker 1: on it would turn out to be closer to two

564
00:33:09,560 --> 00:33:14,040
Speaker 1: million dollars. So their plans to completely outfit Israel with

565
00:33:14,120 --> 00:33:16,800
Speaker 1: these charging stations. Originally they were looking at a twenty

566
00:33:16,880 --> 00:33:21,520
Speaker 1: million dollar UH cost to completely do the country. Once

567
00:33:21,560 --> 00:33:24,360
Speaker 1: they realized that they were you know, they were one

568
00:33:24,480 --> 00:33:28,120
Speaker 1: quarter lower than what or rather it was gonna cost

569
00:33:28,120 --> 00:33:31,000
Speaker 1: four times as much per station. You know, that's an

570
00:33:31,000 --> 00:33:35,560
Speaker 1: eighty million dollar price tag just for those charging stations alone.

571
00:33:36,320 --> 00:33:39,920
Speaker 1: And you know, then the delays and building that ends

572
00:33:39,960 --> 00:33:44,680
Speaker 1: up adding up more costs, so that was huge. Right. Secondly,

573
00:33:45,560 --> 00:33:49,280
Speaker 1: the partnership between Better Place and other companies only ever

574
00:33:49,360 --> 00:33:53,200
Speaker 1: resulted in that one vehicle, right, the Renaults, the Renault sedan.

575
00:33:53,440 --> 00:33:56,360
Speaker 1: So if you didn't like that car, there was no

576
00:33:56,440 --> 00:33:58,760
Speaker 1: incentive for you to go and buy one, right, you know,

577
00:33:58,840 --> 00:34:01,440
Speaker 1: there was no other choice, So you had this or

578
00:34:01,520 --> 00:34:04,800
Speaker 1: any other like gasoline powered vehicle, which is completely to

579
00:34:04,800 --> 00:34:08,960
Speaker 1: go back to our earlier comparison completely like saying, oh,

580
00:34:09,000 --> 00:34:13,000
Speaker 1: I want to Android phone and uh Google and this

581
00:34:13,040 --> 00:34:16,719
Speaker 1: one manufacturer saying, uh, something very much like the old

582
00:34:16,760 --> 00:34:20,680
Speaker 1: Henry Ford quote. You can have any color model T want,

583
00:34:21,040 --> 00:34:25,279
Speaker 1: so long as it's black, right exactly. Uh. Based upon

584
00:34:25,320 --> 00:34:28,720
Speaker 1: the different reports we've read, essentially somewhere between fourteen hundred

585
00:34:28,760 --> 00:34:31,960
Speaker 1: and fifteen hundred of those cars were sold total period.

586
00:34:32,200 --> 00:34:35,719
Speaker 1: So you can't support a company that has been going

587
00:34:35,760 --> 00:34:39,240
Speaker 1: through a billion dollars in capital by selling four hundred cars.

588
00:34:39,280 --> 00:34:42,640
Speaker 1: The math just doesn't really add up there. Uh. Third,

589
00:34:42,800 --> 00:34:45,200
Speaker 1: that initial heavy funding, like we said, could have been

590
00:34:45,239 --> 00:34:48,200
Speaker 1: the company's undoing. The fact that they had so much

591
00:34:48,239 --> 00:34:51,239
Speaker 1: money to play with early on meant that they did

592
00:34:51,280 --> 00:34:56,160
Speaker 1: not really focus and create a very conservative plan, and

593
00:34:56,200 --> 00:34:58,799
Speaker 1: they ended up doing lots of crazy stuff, including like

594
00:34:58,920 --> 00:35:02,520
Speaker 1: luxurious off spaces. They had a visitor center that was

595
00:35:02,640 --> 00:35:05,800
Speaker 1: meant to be uh kind of an immersive experience to

596
00:35:06,080 --> 00:35:08,840
Speaker 1: explain to you the wonders of the electric vehicle and

597
00:35:08,880 --> 00:35:12,919
Speaker 1: the better place infrastructure, Right, wasn't it? Yeah? You read

598
00:35:12,920 --> 00:35:15,320
Speaker 1: about like it made me think kind of of the uh,

599
00:35:15,440 --> 00:35:18,480
Speaker 1: the World's Fair type things seen an Iron Man. Uh,

600
00:35:18,520 --> 00:35:21,480
Speaker 1: you know those movies where you had this this crazy

601
00:35:21,680 --> 00:35:25,800
Speaker 1: kind of high tech immersive experience that was well beyond

602
00:35:25,880 --> 00:35:29,279
Speaker 1: what you needed. Like the Fast Company article described it

603
00:35:29,360 --> 00:35:32,400
Speaker 1: as being a there was a holographic theater where a

604
00:35:32,520 --> 00:35:37,400
Speaker 1: holographic version of Agassi would would tell you about better place,

605
00:35:37,840 --> 00:35:41,600
Speaker 1: and that the theater had the theater seats weren't just seats,

606
00:35:41,600 --> 00:35:44,440
Speaker 1: they were vintage car seats that were all arranged in

607
00:35:44,440 --> 00:35:47,239
Speaker 1: a certain way. Um. And that there was like a

608
00:35:47,280 --> 00:35:49,479
Speaker 1: mile long track where you could do a test drive

609
00:35:49,520 --> 00:35:51,640
Speaker 1: of an electric vehicle. And it was just one of

610
00:35:51,640 --> 00:35:53,960
Speaker 1: those things where you could see how much money was

611
00:35:54,040 --> 00:35:58,239
Speaker 1: being sunk into selling the idea and not so much

612
00:35:58,280 --> 00:36:02,440
Speaker 1: in making the idea become real. Uh, making the T

613
00:36:02,640 --> 00:36:06,080
Speaker 1: shirts before you get the band together to rehearse. Yes,

614
00:36:07,040 --> 00:36:09,360
Speaker 1: this is making me think of someone we both know, actually,

615
00:36:09,560 --> 00:36:12,200
Speaker 1: but no, it's uh yeah, it's that that whole whole

616
00:36:12,239 --> 00:36:14,919
Speaker 1: idea where you're selling the idea, you're so in love

617
00:36:14,960 --> 00:36:17,000
Speaker 1: with the idea, and you're so convinced the idea is

618
00:36:17,040 --> 00:36:20,680
Speaker 1: a good idea that you're spending all your time convincing

619
00:36:20,680 --> 00:36:23,080
Speaker 1: everyone else it's a great idea and not spending the

620
00:36:23,160 --> 00:36:26,680
Speaker 1: time actually making the idea happen. We we actually mentioned

621
00:36:26,680 --> 00:36:31,160
Speaker 1: this also off the air. Creative folks know this. You

622
00:36:31,239 --> 00:36:34,440
Speaker 1: don't talk about your book before you write your book.

623
00:36:35,080 --> 00:36:38,200
Speaker 1: You know, don't talk about your screenplay before you're finished

624
00:36:38,200 --> 00:36:41,760
Speaker 1: writing your screenplay. You are setting yourself up for failure

625
00:36:42,160 --> 00:36:44,640
Speaker 1: when you start talking about a project before you've actually

626
00:36:44,680 --> 00:36:48,040
Speaker 1: finished the project. I have experienced this personally. I have

627
00:36:48,120 --> 00:36:51,160
Speaker 1: been guilty of doing this. I think every everybody has.

628
00:36:51,239 --> 00:36:56,279
Speaker 1: But luckily for both you and I, uh, when we did,

629
00:36:56,760 --> 00:37:00,760
Speaker 1: when we've done stuff like this in our past, we

630
00:37:00,760 --> 00:37:05,360
Speaker 1: weren't losing almost a billion dollars. No, no, we and

631
00:37:05,719 --> 00:37:08,719
Speaker 1: most we lost maybe something that would have entertained I

632
00:37:08,719 --> 00:37:12,400
Speaker 1: don't know, fifty people at most, a little bit of

633
00:37:12,440 --> 00:37:15,480
Speaker 1: self respect. I'm gonna be candid, yes, okay, I mean

634
00:37:15,520 --> 00:37:17,439
Speaker 1: there's only so much more of that I can lose

635
00:37:17,480 --> 00:37:20,400
Speaker 1: before I'm I'm just tapped out. But even this wasn't

636
00:37:21,040 --> 00:37:25,120
Speaker 1: These three reasons were not the only reasons. No, uh,

637
00:37:25,320 --> 00:37:30,680
Speaker 1: you need to look at some pretty nasty other reasons too.

638
00:37:30,680 --> 00:37:34,200
Speaker 1: I mean, okay, so we've got incredibly complex organization, right.

639
00:37:34,239 --> 00:37:37,480
Speaker 1: They had offices in Israel for a while. Their headquarters

640
00:37:37,480 --> 00:37:41,200
Speaker 1: was in Palo Alto, California. That's where Agassi was living,

641
00:37:41,320 --> 00:37:44,040
Speaker 1: was in Palo Alto. Uh. He at one point decided

642
00:37:44,080 --> 00:37:46,680
Speaker 1: to take a vacation, took a long vacation, like half

643
00:37:46,680 --> 00:37:51,200
Speaker 1: a year, vacation, went to Israel, metal woman, decided to

644
00:37:51,440 --> 00:37:54,719
Speaker 1: essentially separate from his wife and start dating this woman, uh,

645
00:37:54,760 --> 00:37:58,560
Speaker 1: and decided to relocate to Israel. And so now he

646
00:37:58,640 --> 00:38:01,719
Speaker 1: had changed the global head orders to Israel, not to

647
00:38:01,880 --> 00:38:04,919
Speaker 1: Palo Alto, which ruffled a lot of feathers in the company.

648
00:38:04,960 --> 00:38:06,960
Speaker 1: But the company also got so complex that they had

649
00:38:07,000 --> 00:38:09,640
Speaker 1: to hire an outside management firm to come in and

650
00:38:09,719 --> 00:38:13,320
Speaker 1: try and make sense of everything. It just it balloons

651
00:38:13,320 --> 00:38:16,440
Speaker 1: so quickly. And I guess he also there was some

652
00:38:16,520 --> 00:38:18,600
Speaker 1: nepotism going on. He hired a lot of his own

653
00:38:18,640 --> 00:38:22,200
Speaker 1: family to be in very important positions, none of which,

654
00:38:22,200 --> 00:38:24,520
Speaker 1: by the way, none of the people in his executive

655
00:38:24,520 --> 00:38:28,480
Speaker 1: team had any experience in the auto industry, right, or

656
00:38:28,520 --> 00:38:33,759
Speaker 1: in green technology, very important, two big strikes. Right as

657
00:38:33,840 --> 00:38:36,680
Speaker 1: far as I know, none of the top executives were

658
00:38:36,719 --> 00:38:39,319
Speaker 1: civil engineers either. So you're trying to build out an

659
00:38:39,400 --> 00:38:43,360
Speaker 1: infrastructure for an electric vehicle, which is a green technology,

660
00:38:43,400 --> 00:38:45,759
Speaker 1: and you don't have experts in any of those areas

661
00:38:45,800 --> 00:38:49,799
Speaker 1: occupying the top positions in the in the company. Now,

662
00:38:49,800 --> 00:38:52,320
Speaker 1: on top of that, there are also lots of reports.

663
00:38:52,320 --> 00:38:55,760
Speaker 1: The Fast Company piece particularly spelled this out that Agassi

664
00:38:55,920 --> 00:39:00,400
Speaker 1: has um he's he's not necessarily a humble in adividual.

665
00:39:01,360 --> 00:39:04,719
Speaker 1: He's quite the self promoter. And even going back to

666
00:39:04,800 --> 00:39:07,400
Speaker 1: that those early days with the white paper, he started

667
00:39:07,440 --> 00:39:10,160
Speaker 1: to liken the work that they were proposing, keep in

668
00:39:10,200 --> 00:39:12,759
Speaker 1: mind they hadn't built anything at this point, but saying

669
00:39:12,800 --> 00:39:14,600
Speaker 1: that it was going to be transformative, like the work

670
00:39:14,640 --> 00:39:17,440
Speaker 1: by Edison or even James Watt. So these are the

671
00:39:17,920 --> 00:39:22,160
Speaker 1: folks who you know who brought electricity to the world. Really,

672
00:39:22,160 --> 00:39:24,600
Speaker 1: they were the ones who helped build out that infrastructure

673
00:39:24,600 --> 00:39:27,560
Speaker 1: like Promethean pretty much. Yeah, and he's saying, look, we're

674
00:39:27,560 --> 00:39:30,719
Speaker 1: gonna do the same thing without even having done anything yet.

675
00:39:31,000 --> 00:39:33,480
Speaker 1: It was all like, it's very easy to talk about it,

676
00:39:33,480 --> 00:39:35,960
Speaker 1: it's really hard to do. As as what they he learned.

677
00:39:36,120 --> 00:39:39,239
Speaker 1: He also said that he kind of implied he had

678
00:39:39,280 --> 00:39:42,840
Speaker 1: the qualities of the bravery of Churchill, the vision of JFK,

679
00:39:43,120 --> 00:39:47,399
Speaker 1: the determination of Reagan. So we're suggesting that Hubrists may

680
00:39:47,440 --> 00:39:51,439
Speaker 1: have played a part in the failure of this company. Um.

681
00:39:51,840 --> 00:39:54,040
Speaker 1: And it was funny because you know, he he actually

682
00:39:54,080 --> 00:39:56,399
Speaker 1: went public with this idea. This is that going back

683
00:39:56,440 --> 00:39:58,560
Speaker 1: to that you don't talk about it before you do it.

684
00:39:59,000 --> 00:40:01,080
Speaker 1: He went public with the idea for a better place

685
00:40:01,360 --> 00:40:04,120
Speaker 1: before he even quit his previous job. He was at

686
00:40:04,160 --> 00:40:07,400
Speaker 1: another job for another like three or four months before

687
00:40:07,440 --> 00:40:09,719
Speaker 1: he quit, and he and really, you know, he said,

688
00:40:09,800 --> 00:40:12,560
Speaker 1: he talks about in the interviews about how oh yeah,

689
00:40:12,600 --> 00:40:15,239
Speaker 1: after I announced this, just a few days later, I

690
00:40:15,280 --> 00:40:18,960
Speaker 1: quit my job and I started better place. Now what

691
00:40:19,040 --> 00:40:21,960
Speaker 1: happened was he talked about it, and then three months

692
00:40:22,000 --> 00:40:24,600
Speaker 1: later the job where he was he had thought he

693
00:40:24,640 --> 00:40:26,759
Speaker 1: was going to become the next CEO, and they went

694
00:40:26,840 --> 00:40:29,360
Speaker 1: with someone else, and then he quit his job and

695
00:40:29,400 --> 00:40:33,360
Speaker 1: started better place. Not saying that the things are definitely connected,

696
00:40:33,680 --> 00:40:37,440
Speaker 1: but you know, in hindsight, it looks like that. So yeah.

697
00:40:37,520 --> 00:40:41,040
Speaker 1: He also talked about ordering a hundred thousand Renault cars

698
00:40:41,040 --> 00:40:43,560
Speaker 1: between two thousand eleven and two thousand sixteen. Like to

699
00:40:43,760 --> 00:40:46,520
Speaker 1: have a hundred thousand a fleet of these cars to

700
00:40:46,719 --> 00:40:51,160
Speaker 1: sell to the Israeli market. Uh. And eventually he said

701
00:40:51,239 --> 00:40:56,160
Speaker 1: Israel and Denmark numbers here. Yeah. Yeah, So a hundred

702
00:40:56,200 --> 00:40:59,800
Speaker 1: thousand cars in Israel would account for more than half

703
00:41:00,080 --> 00:41:03,719
Speaker 1: of all new cars for the car market. So in

704
00:41:03,719 --> 00:41:06,840
Speaker 1: other words, you're looking at fewer than two hundred thousand

705
00:41:07,000 --> 00:41:09,200
Speaker 1: new cars in Israel are going to be purchased in

706
00:41:09,239 --> 00:41:11,600
Speaker 1: any given year. That's just how big that market is.

707
00:41:12,040 --> 00:41:14,359
Speaker 1: And he was expecting to have more than half of

708
00:41:14,360 --> 00:41:18,120
Speaker 1: that market made up of the better place cars. Now, no,

709
00:41:19,239 --> 00:41:24,200
Speaker 1: not a single car manufacturer has a share over fift

710
00:41:24,880 --> 00:41:27,560
Speaker 1: of that market. Young Day is the one that has

711
00:41:27,600 --> 00:41:30,680
Speaker 1: the biggest So I think it's home Day. I might

712
00:41:30,680 --> 00:41:32,200
Speaker 1: be wrong about that, but I know that it was.

713
00:41:33,520 --> 00:41:36,800
Speaker 1: So that means that not only would he be dominating

714
00:41:36,840 --> 00:41:40,759
Speaker 1: the new car market, but suddenly consumer behavior would completely

715
00:41:40,880 --> 00:41:43,520
Speaker 1: change and instead of people being interested in various types

716
00:41:43,560 --> 00:41:46,560
Speaker 1: of cars, everyone would suddenly be focused on this one car.

717
00:41:47,000 --> 00:41:49,680
Speaker 1: Keep in mind, there's only one model available and it

718
00:41:49,760 --> 00:41:52,080
Speaker 1: was a Sedan. So if he didn't want a sedan,

719
00:41:52,480 --> 00:41:55,399
Speaker 1: then you know you, I don't know why you would

720
00:41:55,480 --> 00:41:57,960
Speaker 1: end up buying this car. And if you had a

721
00:41:58,080 --> 00:42:02,160
Speaker 1: larger family then like there's so many situations, Jeff, larger

722
00:42:02,200 --> 00:42:05,120
Speaker 1: family or you're you're just a college student buying their

723
00:42:05,160 --> 00:42:10,160
Speaker 1: first car, and cars can be very difficult to afford.

724
00:42:10,560 --> 00:42:14,879
Speaker 1: It made it's kind of tough for uh, it's kind

725
00:42:14,880 --> 00:42:17,160
Speaker 1: of tough to get in the United States. If you

726
00:42:17,520 --> 00:42:20,480
Speaker 1: if you've never lived somewhere else, You've never really read

727
00:42:20,520 --> 00:42:24,800
Speaker 1: about this. But the United States having such a car culture,

728
00:42:24,560 --> 00:42:28,120
Speaker 1: sure it becomes sort of expected that someone will have

729
00:42:28,160 --> 00:42:30,120
Speaker 1: a car, and there are these rites of passage for it.

730
00:42:30,400 --> 00:42:33,280
Speaker 1: But that is not in any way the case across

731
00:42:33,320 --> 00:42:35,560
Speaker 1: the rest of the world. A car is a big

732
00:42:35,600 --> 00:42:39,360
Speaker 1: investment here, it's a huge investment in other places where

733
00:42:39,600 --> 00:42:42,960
Speaker 1: you know, cost of living and housing and uh, basic

734
00:42:43,040 --> 00:42:45,799
Speaker 1: staples of food are more expensive. To begin with, just

735
00:42:45,880 --> 00:42:48,520
Speaker 1: the layout of cities, because a lot of these cities

736
00:42:48,560 --> 00:42:52,239
Speaker 1: are so old that you know, they're not laid out

737
00:42:52,400 --> 00:42:55,799
Speaker 1: for vehicles, like for cars, Yeah, very narrow streets, Yeah,

738
00:42:55,840 --> 00:42:59,680
Speaker 1: just so. And so the question then becomes, you know, uh,

739
00:43:00,040 --> 00:43:02,960
Speaker 1: what more of a more of a thing, like what

740
00:43:03,040 --> 00:43:06,160
Speaker 1: do I have to do as a car company to

741
00:43:06,320 --> 00:43:10,279
Speaker 1: convince you to spend all this money and take on

742
00:43:10,719 --> 00:43:14,880
Speaker 1: all this bird in this inconveniences ownership? And I think

743
00:43:14,920 --> 00:43:18,480
Speaker 1: there was a miscalculation there. Yeah, well, considering that they

744
00:43:18,520 --> 00:43:20,600
Speaker 1: only sold a hundred cars in the first couple of

745
00:43:20,640 --> 00:43:24,040
Speaker 1: months that they had cars to sell, and most of

746
00:43:24,080 --> 00:43:29,960
Speaker 1: those customers were better place employees, I think you're right, Yeah,

747
00:43:30,040 --> 00:43:32,359
Speaker 1: and just just wasn't gonna happen. What was that thing

748
00:43:32,400 --> 00:43:35,400
Speaker 1: you said in the beginning. Uh, it was one of

749
00:43:35,400 --> 00:43:38,439
Speaker 1: those robot arms statements. Oh, the car will be cheap

750
00:43:39,280 --> 00:43:41,239
Speaker 1: because it would be subsidized because you would have the

751
00:43:41,360 --> 00:43:44,800
Speaker 1: subscription fee. It turned out that the cost of producing

752
00:43:44,840 --> 00:43:47,759
Speaker 1: these was so high. Uh. And and Renault was the

753
00:43:47,800 --> 00:43:50,680
Speaker 1: only company that they were working with, right. I guess

754
00:43:50,800 --> 00:43:52,759
Speaker 1: you said that he was hoping, or at least the

755
00:43:53,160 --> 00:43:55,160
Speaker 1: people around him said that what he was trying to

756
00:43:55,200 --> 00:43:58,399
Speaker 1: do was entice other car manufacturers to join in as well,

757
00:43:58,719 --> 00:44:01,160
Speaker 1: and then the company Better Place would have a lot

758
00:44:01,200 --> 00:44:04,520
Speaker 1: more leverage, right, because they could put the different car

759
00:44:04,560 --> 00:44:06,960
Speaker 1: manufacturers against each other and say, hey, you want to

760
00:44:07,000 --> 00:44:09,880
Speaker 1: sell this car to us for thirty eight thousand dollars,

761
00:44:09,920 --> 00:44:12,000
Speaker 1: but we can get a car from this other company

762
00:44:12,040 --> 00:44:16,400
Speaker 1: for you know, eighteen thousand dollars. So you're gonna have

763
00:44:16,400 --> 00:44:19,120
Speaker 1: to cut some some money off of that price tag

764
00:44:19,320 --> 00:44:22,520
Speaker 1: and then they could pass that on to the Better

765
00:44:22,560 --> 00:44:25,920
Speaker 1: Place customers. But that never happened. Well. And also, to

766
00:44:26,080 --> 00:44:30,480
Speaker 1: be absolutely fair, that strategy is a viable one. But

767
00:44:30,640 --> 00:44:34,919
Speaker 1: there's um, there's there's one point that that I think

768
00:44:35,560 --> 00:44:39,719
Speaker 1: we should make for anybody who who wonders why there

769
00:44:39,760 --> 00:44:42,319
Speaker 1: are so few car companies in the world because if

770
00:44:42,320 --> 00:44:46,040
Speaker 1: you think about it, there there's so many cars, Jonathan,

771
00:44:46,480 --> 00:44:49,160
Speaker 1: and there there's so many uh. There there's so few

772
00:44:49,280 --> 00:44:53,680
Speaker 1: rather car manufacturers, and there are countries that have no

773
00:44:53,880 --> 00:44:58,840
Speaker 1: domestic car manufacturing because the amount of quote unquote moving parts,

774
00:44:58,920 --> 00:45:02,520
Speaker 1: the difficulty of all that, the starting capital you need

775
00:45:02,760 --> 00:45:07,919
Speaker 1: in order to get into that business is is gigantic, right, Yeah,

776
00:45:07,960 --> 00:45:11,760
Speaker 1: like a lot of businesses, less small businesses fail uh

777
00:45:11,880 --> 00:45:16,680
Speaker 1: in the first five years. And with startup car companies

778
00:45:17,040 --> 00:45:22,239
Speaker 1: it's even more difficult, uh, and and even more attrition

779
00:45:22,400 --> 00:45:26,160
Speaker 1: in that space. So Tesla, my friend, is a diamond

780
00:45:26,160 --> 00:45:29,200
Speaker 1: in the rough. It's um. I wouldn't say winning the

781
00:45:29,200 --> 00:45:32,680
Speaker 1: lottery because I don't think it's entirely luck based, but

782
00:45:32,880 --> 00:45:35,080
Speaker 1: this is um. But it's a very it's a very

783
00:45:35,120 --> 00:45:38,799
Speaker 1: interesting contrast to what better place was, right. And then

784
00:45:38,920 --> 00:45:41,040
Speaker 1: on top of all that, I mean there were times

785
00:45:41,040 --> 00:45:43,959
Speaker 1: where Agassi was actually saying that he could even see

786
00:45:44,160 --> 00:45:47,200
Speaker 1: them giving away a car, like you would get the

787
00:45:47,239 --> 00:45:49,400
Speaker 1: subscription fee and then you would get a car like

788
00:45:49,520 --> 00:45:51,600
Speaker 1: in the cell phone like truly subsidized to the point

789
00:45:51,640 --> 00:45:53,680
Speaker 1: where you're not paying for the car, you're just paying

790
00:45:53,719 --> 00:45:57,439
Speaker 1: for the service. Uh, and uh, that never, that never,

791
00:45:58,440 --> 00:46:00,839
Speaker 1: that was never a possibility with they're the way they

792
00:46:00,960 --> 00:46:02,840
Speaker 1: were doing business at that point. And that's a U.

793
00:46:03,040 --> 00:46:04,799
Speaker 1: But that's a that's kind of a more of a

794
00:46:04,880 --> 00:46:08,920
Speaker 1: pure tech strategy too, isn't Because don't um, didn't you

795
00:46:08,960 --> 00:46:11,840
Speaker 1: tell me earlier or maybe I just heard on this

796
00:46:11,880 --> 00:46:16,160
Speaker 1: show a while back about during Console Wars, some of

797
00:46:16,200 --> 00:46:19,800
Speaker 1: the console makers will, yeah, they sell it a loss

798
00:46:19,800 --> 00:46:21,760
Speaker 1: and they make it up in games. Now. That only works,

799
00:46:21,760 --> 00:46:23,800
Speaker 1: of course, if you are in the business of making games,

800
00:46:23,840 --> 00:46:25,920
Speaker 1: and if you have more than one game. Yeah, if

801
00:46:25,960 --> 00:46:28,520
Speaker 1: you are just making one game, which is essentially what

802
00:46:28,800 --> 00:46:31,160
Speaker 1: better place was doing. If you have one game and

803
00:46:31,200 --> 00:46:33,359
Speaker 1: not everyone once that game, and in fact, very few

804
00:46:33,360 --> 00:46:35,840
Speaker 1: people won that game, he can't really support selling the

805
00:46:35,880 --> 00:46:38,520
Speaker 1: console at a loss. So that was a big issue.

806
00:46:38,560 --> 00:46:40,920
Speaker 1: And then, uh, you know, there was a lot of

807
00:46:41,239 --> 00:46:44,680
Speaker 1: friction between Agassi and his executive team. They were starting

808
00:46:44,719 --> 00:46:48,160
Speaker 1: to get really upset with his move from Palo Alto

809
00:46:48,200 --> 00:46:51,000
Speaker 1: to Israel. Uh, he ended up hiring a lot of

810
00:46:51,000 --> 00:46:53,799
Speaker 1: his girlfriends, friends and positions when they said that that

811
00:46:53,840 --> 00:46:57,759
Speaker 1: even watered down this already kind of weak executive team.

812
00:46:57,800 --> 00:46:59,560
Speaker 1: People who weren't really you know, some of them are

813
00:46:59,600 --> 00:47:01,440
Speaker 1: really good. What they did is just that what they

814
00:47:01,440 --> 00:47:05,640
Speaker 1: did was not aligned with running an auto company. And

815
00:47:05,719 --> 00:47:09,000
Speaker 1: so first he was asked to kind of become a

816
00:47:09,040 --> 00:47:12,360
Speaker 1: figurehead and he refused. Eventually he was forced out. He

817
00:47:12,400 --> 00:47:15,400
Speaker 1: was fired as CEO in October two thousand and twelve

818
00:47:16,000 --> 00:47:18,960
Speaker 1: UM and he was replaced by Evan Thornley, who was

819
00:47:19,040 --> 00:47:22,279
Speaker 1: the CEO of Better Place Australia. Because they had set

820
00:47:22,320 --> 00:47:24,400
Speaker 1: up headquarters in all the countries they were planning on

821
00:47:24,520 --> 00:47:27,880
Speaker 1: operating in Australia, Israel, and of course they had the

822
00:47:27,920 --> 00:47:31,520
Speaker 1: Palo Alto office in the United States. So at that

823
00:47:31,560 --> 00:47:34,400
Speaker 1: time the company had lost about four million dollars and

824
00:47:34,600 --> 00:47:36,479
Speaker 1: not just gone through the capital, I mean they were

825
00:47:36,520 --> 00:47:39,400
Speaker 1: in the hole. And then they were losing about a

826
00:47:39,440 --> 00:47:42,520
Speaker 1: half million dollars per day. So Thornley, he was a

827
00:47:42,520 --> 00:47:45,680
Speaker 1: businessman and politician back in Australia, he actually had a

828
00:47:45,680 --> 00:47:48,480
Speaker 1: lot of interesting things to say that Fast Company article

829
00:47:49,080 --> 00:47:52,080
Speaker 1: where he was talking about the how some of the

830
00:47:52,160 --> 00:47:55,359
Speaker 1: horrible deals that Agassi had gotten into. Agassi had had

831
00:47:55,440 --> 00:47:59,880
Speaker 1: given all these companies contracts and then given these they

832
00:48:00,040 --> 00:48:04,000
Speaker 1: they had these huge cancelation fees. Actually hadn't really um

833
00:48:04,280 --> 00:48:07,880
Speaker 1: uh negotiated with the companies at all, so he was

834
00:48:07,960 --> 00:48:09,640
Speaker 1: essentially saying, like they would say, all right, well, if

835
00:48:09,640 --> 00:48:11,400
Speaker 1: you cancel out of this, you're gonna owe US X

836
00:48:11,480 --> 00:48:14,960
Speaker 1: million dollars, and he said, sure, signs on the dieline.

837
00:48:15,239 --> 00:48:16,759
Speaker 1: And so there was no way to get out of

838
00:48:16,760 --> 00:48:19,200
Speaker 1: the contracts. And in fact, the only way they could

839
00:48:19,239 --> 00:48:22,120
Speaker 1: have maybe kept the company going would be if they

840
00:48:22,120 --> 00:48:24,600
Speaker 1: were able to expand into other markets, but they had

841
00:48:24,640 --> 00:48:26,879
Speaker 1: already that was that meant that they had to start

842
00:48:26,920 --> 00:48:29,319
Speaker 1: spending even more money. So it was just this kind

843
00:48:29,360 --> 00:48:33,120
Speaker 1: of deep cavern that he found himself in. And uh,

844
00:48:33,440 --> 00:48:36,840
Speaker 1: he wasn't given a long time to really try and

845
00:48:37,000 --> 00:48:40,200
Speaker 1: establish anything. He was put in place in October two,

846
00:48:40,440 --> 00:48:46,040
Speaker 1: twelve thornly that is, and uh then in January he

847
00:48:46,040 --> 00:48:49,600
Speaker 1: was fired, So he had only had a couple of

848
00:48:49,640 --> 00:48:52,480
Speaker 1: months to really try and work anything. I don't know that.

849
00:48:52,560 --> 00:48:55,399
Speaker 1: I don't know that anyone could have turned things around

850
00:48:55,440 --> 00:48:59,399
Speaker 1: so dramatically in that period to make everyone happy. Yeah,

851
00:48:59,440 --> 00:49:03,560
Speaker 1: that's what what could he have possibly done? Because those

852
00:49:03,640 --> 00:49:07,319
Speaker 1: kind of agreements are pretty ironclad. Yeah, it's not like

853
00:49:07,400 --> 00:49:09,000
Speaker 1: he was the one who signed them either, So that

854
00:49:09,080 --> 00:49:13,080
Speaker 1: was kind of crazy. So eventually they were purchased by Sunrise.

855
00:49:13,120 --> 00:49:17,720
Speaker 1: They declared bankruptcy. Better Place to declare, liquidated its assets

856
00:49:17,840 --> 00:49:22,200
Speaker 1: what what little there were. Sunrise U bought the company

857
00:49:22,320 --> 00:49:25,280
Speaker 1: said that they would keep on fifty of the eighty

858
00:49:25,320 --> 00:49:29,760
Speaker 1: employees um and that they would operate fifteen charging stations

859
00:49:29,760 --> 00:49:32,760
Speaker 1: in Israel for at least two years. All the battery

860
00:49:32,760 --> 00:49:36,200
Speaker 1: swapping stations gone, fifteen charging stations would be all that

861
00:49:36,239 --> 00:49:40,560
Speaker 1: would remain, and ultimately they had sold about vehicles. And

862
00:49:40,760 --> 00:49:43,560
Speaker 1: so that's kind of the end of the Better Place story.

863
00:49:43,920 --> 00:49:46,160
Speaker 1: And again this kind of it's a it's a really

864
00:49:46,160 --> 00:49:48,799
Speaker 1: good parallel to that dot Com. It's that idea of

865
00:49:49,239 --> 00:49:53,200
Speaker 1: here's an incredible opportunity, and the opportunity is real, there's

866
00:49:53,200 --> 00:49:56,920
Speaker 1: a there's a real opportunity to seize uh, and there's

867
00:49:56,920 --> 00:49:59,879
Speaker 1: a real way of actually making it work. The exa

868
00:50:00,000 --> 00:50:02,960
Speaker 1: ample for dot com would be Amazon. Amazon came out

869
00:50:03,000 --> 00:50:06,239
Speaker 1: around the time of the dot com boom and survived.

870
00:50:06,640 --> 00:50:09,560
Speaker 1: It survived and then later thrived, but it it had

871
00:50:09,600 --> 00:50:13,799
Speaker 1: a real rough, slow start, and it was only through

872
00:50:14,000 --> 00:50:18,680
Speaker 1: taking a fairly conservative approach, taking risks where there were

873
00:50:18,760 --> 00:50:21,759
Speaker 1: risks to be had, but not doing so, not just

874
00:50:21,920 --> 00:50:24,040
Speaker 1: not just saying, oh, well, we're just going to sell

875
00:50:24,120 --> 00:50:27,439
Speaker 1: everything to everyone everywhere. That wasn't what Amazon said it. First,

876
00:50:27,440 --> 00:50:30,719
Speaker 1: they concentrated on books, That's what they did, and it

877
00:50:30,760 --> 00:50:33,400
Speaker 1: was only after building out that business they started to

878
00:50:33,480 --> 00:50:37,160
Speaker 1: kind of grow, and they did so in a very uh,

879
00:50:37,520 --> 00:50:42,440
Speaker 1: very strategic way, still taking risks again when they could better.

880
00:50:42,480 --> 00:50:45,759
Speaker 1: Place was more about let's aim for the pie in

881
00:50:45,800 --> 00:50:48,880
Speaker 1: the sky approach and we're just gonna do everything, or

882
00:50:48,920 --> 00:50:50,960
Speaker 1: at least we're gonna say we're gonna do everything and

883
00:50:51,000 --> 00:50:54,080
Speaker 1: we'll figure out how to do everything later. Yeah. The

884
00:50:54,120 --> 00:50:57,560
Speaker 1: thing is that you can be an idea person, but

885
00:50:58,000 --> 00:51:02,440
Speaker 1: you can't not be an engineer of some sort in

886
00:51:02,880 --> 00:51:05,239
Speaker 1: this sort of space. So like if we look at

887
00:51:05,280 --> 00:51:09,239
Speaker 1: Elon Musk, he he sometimes may come off as a

888
00:51:09,280 --> 00:51:13,080
Speaker 1: big idea of person. You remember, the last time we

889
00:51:13,120 --> 00:51:15,640
Speaker 1: were hanging out on tech stuff, we talked about the hyperloop,

890
00:51:16,160 --> 00:51:20,239
Speaker 1: which is amazing, and if it were anyone other than

891
00:51:20,320 --> 00:51:23,360
Speaker 1: Elon Musk, I would I would say it was just vaporwear.

892
00:51:24,120 --> 00:51:26,960
Speaker 1: But he's led up to this and we've both seen

893
00:51:27,400 --> 00:51:29,960
Speaker 1: in our respect to shows, we've both seen this the

894
00:51:30,000 --> 00:51:32,680
Speaker 1: evolution in this guy. So even though he might sound

895
00:51:32,719 --> 00:51:36,120
Speaker 1: like he's some big idea guy who will vanish in

896
00:51:36,200 --> 00:51:41,960
Speaker 1: some weird Ponzi scheme. Everything he's done for years, He's

897
00:51:42,000 --> 00:51:45,960
Speaker 1: gone to space. At least his company has sent stuff

898
00:51:46,000 --> 00:51:49,560
Speaker 1: to space. Yeah, I mean, it's it's pretty incredible. He

899
00:51:49,560 --> 00:51:53,719
Speaker 1: he backs up, either through his own ingenuity or by

900
00:51:53,800 --> 00:51:56,839
Speaker 1: hiring people who know what they're doing. He has been

901
00:51:56,880 --> 00:52:00,320
Speaker 1: able to, uh to make great headway in his the

902
00:52:00,400 --> 00:52:04,440
Speaker 1: various industries that he's entered into. So, whether hyperloop ever happens,

903
00:52:04,520 --> 00:52:07,560
Speaker 1: I mean, that's an interesting idea. I would love to

904
00:52:07,560 --> 00:52:10,399
Speaker 1: see it happen. Whether it ever happens, I don't know.

905
00:52:10,480 --> 00:52:13,400
Speaker 1: But the fact that he has made such incredible progress

906
00:52:13,440 --> 00:52:16,439
Speaker 1: in electric vehicles in the United States already, and he's

907
00:52:16,480 --> 00:52:19,040
Speaker 1: done it in this very like you know, like we said,

908
00:52:19,280 --> 00:52:22,120
Speaker 1: it's just as flashy in many ways as a Better Place,

909
00:52:22,680 --> 00:52:27,560
Speaker 1: but it was a fundamentally different strategy that actually has worked. Um,

910
00:52:27,600 --> 00:52:31,680
Speaker 1: It's worked slowly. It's a very it's a very gradual progression,

911
00:52:31,719 --> 00:52:35,000
Speaker 1: but it's actually working. It'll be interesting to see if

912
00:52:35,000 --> 00:52:39,520
Speaker 1: that continues. And to me, I think the thing to

913
00:52:39,560 --> 00:52:43,520
Speaker 1: take away from this is that the again, the purpose

914
00:52:43,680 --> 00:52:46,960
Speaker 1: of Better Place was in many ways noble right, this

915
00:52:47,080 --> 00:52:49,600
Speaker 1: idea of getting off of fossil fuels to move to

916
00:52:49,640 --> 00:52:52,359
Speaker 1: a renewable energy source. Keeping in mind that depending upon

917
00:52:52,400 --> 00:52:55,560
Speaker 1: how you generate the electricity, they had said that they

918
00:52:55,600 --> 00:52:57,720
Speaker 1: wanted to make sure that all of their charging stations

919
00:52:57,719 --> 00:53:01,560
Speaker 1: were generating electricity in renewable ways, so either through solar power,

920
00:53:01,840 --> 00:53:06,839
Speaker 1: hydro power, wind power, whatever. Um. You know, as long

921
00:53:06,880 --> 00:53:08,480
Speaker 1: as you're doing that kind of thing and you're being

922
00:53:08,480 --> 00:53:12,239
Speaker 1: responsible with the way you generate electricity, that's wonderful. We

923
00:53:12,280 --> 00:53:14,200
Speaker 1: want to see that happen. And in fact, I don't

924
00:53:14,200 --> 00:53:17,279
Speaker 1: think anyone wanted well maybe some car companies wanted to

925
00:53:17,280 --> 00:53:20,040
Speaker 1: see better place fail, but I don't think anyone really

926
00:53:20,080 --> 00:53:22,319
Speaker 1: wanted a better place to fail. It was just that

927
00:53:22,640 --> 00:53:25,200
Speaker 1: there was They set themselves up for failure, They didn't

928
00:53:25,239 --> 00:53:28,000
Speaker 1: set themselves up for success. Right. It's very I'm really

929
00:53:28,040 --> 00:53:29,919
Speaker 1: glad you said that, because it's very important to note

930
00:53:29,920 --> 00:53:32,879
Speaker 1: that in this context, there were no con men, there

931
00:53:32,880 --> 00:53:36,520
Speaker 1: were no Charlatan's. There were people who were honestly trying

932
00:53:36,600 --> 00:53:39,960
Speaker 1: to get a good idea from the realm of imagination

933
00:53:40,080 --> 00:53:44,200
Speaker 1: into the real world, as you said, and unfortunately, um,

934
00:53:44,320 --> 00:53:47,879
Speaker 1: it looks like what we've learned through our our case

935
00:53:47,920 --> 00:53:50,160
Speaker 1: study of some of this stuff is that it was

936
00:53:50,239 --> 00:53:53,360
Speaker 1: ultimately it was mismanagement more than a little bit of

937
00:53:53,440 --> 00:53:58,359
Speaker 1: ego and a lack of patients. Yeah, I think so.

938
00:53:58,440 --> 00:54:00,680
Speaker 1: I think they were too aggressive to or e and

939
00:54:00,800 --> 00:54:04,920
Speaker 1: too unrealistic. Um. I think, uh, you know, maybe we

940
00:54:04,960 --> 00:54:06,960
Speaker 1: can see sunrise if whether or not after the two

941
00:54:07,040 --> 00:54:10,680
Speaker 1: years or up, if they continue to support those charging stations,

942
00:54:11,400 --> 00:54:14,200
Speaker 1: if we continue to see an effort to move over

943
00:54:14,239 --> 00:54:17,000
Speaker 1: to electric vehicles in Israel in particular because that was

944
00:54:17,040 --> 00:54:20,480
Speaker 1: the main base of operations. Uh, it'll be interesting to

945
00:54:20,520 --> 00:54:23,480
Speaker 1: see if that continues or if it will take something

946
00:54:23,520 --> 00:54:28,719
Speaker 1: like Tesla ultimately making this this approach work really well.

947
00:54:28,960 --> 00:54:32,279
Speaker 1: And of course other companies, other established car companies are

948
00:54:32,320 --> 00:54:37,040
Speaker 1: also producing electric vehicles. They tend to be very like

949
00:54:37,040 --> 00:54:40,640
Speaker 1: a small slice of the overall pie chart, that is

950
00:54:40,680 --> 00:54:44,160
Speaker 1: what they offer. But it's it's something that we will

951
00:54:44,680 --> 00:54:47,400
Speaker 1: continue to see in the future. So then I have

952
00:54:47,520 --> 00:54:50,719
Speaker 1: to thank you for coming onto the show and participating

953
00:54:50,719 --> 00:54:54,160
Speaker 1: in this and talking about this. Uh, this incredible company

954
00:54:54,200 --> 00:54:57,359
Speaker 1: and the I mean it's interesting to really look at

955
00:54:57,360 --> 00:55:00,480
Speaker 1: the drama behind it. And again there's so many lessons

956
00:55:00,520 --> 00:55:02,440
Speaker 1: to learn, not just in the auto industry, but in

957
00:55:02,440 --> 00:55:05,080
Speaker 1: the tech industry in general. We've seen this lesson repeated

958
00:55:05,160 --> 00:55:09,120
Speaker 1: multiple times that it was fun to actually dive into this.

959
00:55:09,239 --> 00:55:12,080
Speaker 1: I had no knowledge of better place before we started

960
00:55:12,120 --> 00:55:15,200
Speaker 1: looking into this, this um this episode, so for me,

961
00:55:15,239 --> 00:55:18,480
Speaker 1: it was really educational. Oh and thank you for the

962
00:55:18,960 --> 00:55:22,400
Speaker 1: email there, Russell, and thank thank you as always Jonathan

963
00:55:22,440 --> 00:55:24,480
Speaker 1: for having me on. If you don't mind, I'd like

964
00:55:24,560 --> 00:55:28,239
Speaker 1: to plug a couple of things absolutely, Okay. First thing

965
00:55:28,280 --> 00:55:31,279
Speaker 1: I want to plug is uh brain Stuff, which is

966
00:55:31,320 --> 00:55:34,680
Speaker 1: our everyday science show. We've got a video series on

967
00:55:34,719 --> 00:55:39,239
Speaker 1: YouTube where listeners you can see Jonathan and myself and

968
00:55:39,280 --> 00:55:43,920
Speaker 1: several other of our fantastic co hosts, including Lauren Lauren.

969
00:55:44,280 --> 00:55:47,480
Speaker 1: I can't believe I forgot to see yes, including including Lauren,

970
00:55:47,600 --> 00:55:49,800
Speaker 1: And you can see Lauren and Jonathan co hosts some

971
00:55:49,840 --> 00:55:53,920
Speaker 1: stuff on there where they answer questions about everything from

972
00:55:54,120 --> 00:55:57,480
Speaker 1: hair to lightsabers and twins. Uh yeah, We've we've got

973
00:55:57,520 --> 00:55:59,400
Speaker 1: some I talk about whether or not a sound is

974
00:55:59,480 --> 00:56:02,839
Speaker 1: so loud can kill you? Lauren, Lauren and Joe McCormick

975
00:56:03,239 --> 00:56:06,040
Speaker 1: have a great video about laugh tracks, which goes into

976
00:56:06,120 --> 00:56:09,800
Speaker 1: my next plug, Jonathan, and that is for forward thinking

977
00:56:10,120 --> 00:56:12,719
Speaker 1: you're plugging stuff that I'm on, Yeah, and plains. I

978
00:56:12,760 --> 00:56:14,279
Speaker 1: don't know if the I don't know if the tech

979
00:56:14,280 --> 00:56:17,160
Speaker 1: stuff listeners UH know about this. I assume that you do.

980
00:56:17,200 --> 00:56:19,080
Speaker 1: But if this is your first time checking out this

981
00:56:19,120 --> 00:56:22,839
Speaker 1: show and you enjoyed it, you can also find more

982
00:56:23,120 --> 00:56:26,759
Speaker 1: future oriented topics, and not just in tech, but the

983
00:56:26,760 --> 00:56:28,920
Speaker 1: big questions of the future. And then of course I

984
00:56:28,960 --> 00:56:31,480
Speaker 1: have to plug car stuff that you are on with

985
00:56:31,520 --> 00:56:34,200
Speaker 1: Scott Benjament, which if you are really and if you're

986
00:56:34,440 --> 00:56:36,880
Speaker 1: if you're into cars, or even if you're just interested

987
00:56:36,880 --> 00:56:39,600
Speaker 1: in it but you've always been intimidated, that's a great

988
00:56:39,680 --> 00:56:43,200
Speaker 1: podcast to listen to because Ben, you are really good

989
00:56:43,239 --> 00:56:46,160
Speaker 1: at uh at at talking to Scott who has an

990
00:56:46,160 --> 00:56:51,640
Speaker 1: incredible expertise and all things automotive, and you really are

991
00:56:51,719 --> 00:56:53,879
Speaker 1: great at having this conversation with him where you can

992
00:56:53,920 --> 00:56:57,520
Speaker 1: really get to the bottom of everything from how specific

993
00:56:57,600 --> 00:57:01,120
Speaker 1: parts of a car work, to trends in vehicles to

994
00:57:01,160 --> 00:57:03,759
Speaker 1: all sorts of stuff. It's a great podcast. Gosh, well,

995
00:57:03,840 --> 00:57:05,560
Speaker 1: thank you so much. We've got to stop our love

996
00:57:05,640 --> 00:57:08,839
Speaker 1: fest here so we will except for us stuff they

997
00:57:08,840 --> 00:57:10,399
Speaker 1: don't want you to know, which I can't talk about,

998
00:57:10,560 --> 00:57:13,480
Speaker 1: but you should shut out, but you know they don't

999
00:57:13,520 --> 00:57:18,760
Speaker 1: want me to say anymore. Yeah redacted. All right, So guys,

1000
00:57:18,840 --> 00:57:21,600
Speaker 1: thank you so much for listening. If you have any suggestions,

1001
00:57:21,600 --> 00:57:24,160
Speaker 1: like Russell, you can write to us our email addresses

1002
00:57:24,200 --> 00:57:27,120
Speaker 1: tech stuffed at health stuff works dot com, or drop

1003
00:57:27,160 --> 00:57:30,000
Speaker 1: us a line on Facebook, Twitter or Tumbler or handle it.

1004
00:57:30,120 --> 00:57:33,280
Speaker 1: All three is text stuff hs W and we will

1005
00:57:33,320 --> 00:57:40,120
Speaker 1: taught to you again really soon for more on this

1006
00:57:40,280 --> 00:57:42,800
Speaker 1: and bathands of other topics because it how staff works

1007
00:57:42,800 --> 00:57:53,040
Speaker 1: dot com