Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff Works dot com ky and welcome to text Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm Jonathan Strickland, and this week we have a guest host,
Speaker 1: Ben Bolon of car stuff and Stuff they Don't Want
Speaker 1: You to Know and brain stuff and other stuff. Lauren
Speaker 1: is out this week, so Ben has kindly offered to
Speaker 1: step in. So thank you very much, Ben. Oh, thank you.
Speaker 1: This is uh, this is fantastic, big fan. Uh the
Speaker 1: last time I was here, I used a joke longtime fan,
Speaker 1: first time co host, and uh, we can't use that
Speaker 1: one again. Yeah, but I'm doing that thing where you
Speaker 1: just say it anyway. Um. Yeah, So thank you so
Speaker 1: much for having me on the show, especially because this
Speaker 1: is a topic that you hipped me too. And I think, um,
Speaker 1: I think that this presents a fantastic cautionary tale, yes,
Speaker 1: and a fantastic almost hariensic experience on our part. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: What Ben is referring to is the topic better Place
Speaker 1: a company that This was actually a request that a
Speaker 1: listeners and in the listener Russell via email wrote in
Speaker 1: and said it would be great if you could do
Speaker 1: a podcast on a better Place electric car project. Following
Speaker 1: up on your Tesla podcast. It would be interesting to
Speaker 1: show the other approaches that are being tried around the world.
Speaker 1: And before we get into this, I really want to
Speaker 1: give a shout out to Max Chafkin, who wrote an
Speaker 1: article for Fast Company. It's a phenomenal, phenomenal piece that
Speaker 1: really details the entire life cycle of Better Place, which
Speaker 1: it was not long. So, first of all, spoiler alert folks,
Speaker 1: better better Place. Better Place has gone to a better place. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's gone somewhere for sure. And uh, it's it's strange
Speaker 1: because I think that's such a fantastic name for a company.
Speaker 1: It made me so sad, particularly considering what the whole
Speaker 1: thrust of this company was. As Soul has already mentioned,
Speaker 1: it has to do with electric vehicles. And the article
Speaker 1: at Fast Company, by the way, if you ever want
Speaker 1: to look it up, is called a Broken Place, the
Speaker 1: spectacular failure of the startup that was going to change
Speaker 1: the world. And really that is a pretty accurate assessment
Speaker 1: of what went on. It's um, you know, it's unfortunate
Speaker 1: because again, the the the premise, the whole purpose of
Speaker 1: this company was a noble one, right, The idea of
Speaker 1: creating an infrastructure for electric vehicles because one of the
Speaker 1: things we talked about, and and Ben you've talked about
Speaker 1: this a lot on car stuff, is how going to
Speaker 1: an alternative fuel source is a huge, huge endeavor. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because there's already such a massive conglomeration of sunk cost
Speaker 1: in our current fuel sources. You know, the the idea
Speaker 1: of uh rebuilding essentially an interstate system and and and
Speaker 1: rebuilding every single gas station that we have, and just
Speaker 1: think about how many gas stations you see in twenty
Speaker 1: four hours and having having to make just even just
Speaker 1: one gas station every fifty miles into an electric one
Speaker 1: is a herculean endeavor. And I just want to put
Speaker 1: in um put in one seed here. The reason you know,
Speaker 1: you've heard this story about why they named this company
Speaker 1: a Better Place, right, it's uh yeah, it's apparently it's
Speaker 1: based on the founder Shy Augussi. Uh he had a
Speaker 1: visit to the World Economic Forum Switzerland, you remember this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he went to that that forum, which was had a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of young entrepreneurs obviously, and he started getting
Speaker 1: interested in this idea of alternative fuel Yeah, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: and uh he there was a question asked by a
Speaker 1: guy named Klaus Schwab there who said, how do you
Speaker 1: make the world a better place by and uh, this
Speaker 1: guy who would go on to found Better Place decided that,
Speaker 1: you know, this would be my inspiration, right, and and
Speaker 1: that led up to the origin of this origin of
Speaker 1: this company. In two thousands seven, they publicly launched. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I'm sorry, I guess I'm jumping over because we
Speaker 1: should talk about their grandiose plan, right. Sure, But back
Speaker 1: in two thousand five was when he went to this meeting,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, his his idea of a better
Speaker 1: place was to get the world off of oil dependency.
Speaker 1: And uh, one thing we have to point out is
Speaker 1: shy Agassy came from Israel, and uh, and obviously if
Speaker 1: you want to you have to look at politics as
Speaker 1: part of this. It's not an economics. It's not just
Speaker 1: the idea of a green movement, right, which was already
Speaker 1: becoming a huge thing in the mid two thousand's. The
Speaker 1: green technology was one of those kind of rising star
Speaker 1: industries that idea that we should really invest in this
Speaker 1: because it's the next big thing. Anyone who was paying
Speaker 1: attention to tech in the mid two thousands, mid to
Speaker 1: late two thousand's, you know that was like a buzzword
Speaker 1: of buzzwords. Right. It's kind of faded since then, Not
Speaker 1: that people are less interested in developing green technology, it's
Speaker 1: just no longer this like for a while it was
Speaker 1: a bandwagon thing, right. Yeah, that's that's a perfect way
Speaker 1: to say it, because for for a number of years,
Speaker 1: for a period of time, this would be something where
Speaker 1: every company, every tech company especially had some sort of
Speaker 1: green initiative, right, it was you were just supposed to
Speaker 1: have one, you know. Yeah, And so shy Augussy was
Speaker 1: really kind of jumping on this this momentum. Uh, and
Speaker 1: he well, we'll be talking a lot about him in
Speaker 1: this podcast and about how he kind of had these
Speaker 1: grandiose ideas, Like you said, this grandiose plan, this enormous
Speaker 1: kind of showman sort of persona, very P. T. Barnum,
Speaker 1: very Elon Musk in many ways, will be will be
Speaker 1: kind of comparing him and contrasting him with Elon Musk
Speaker 1: as well, because there's another guy who very similar in
Speaker 1: that he went with electric vehicles as his as one
Speaker 1: of his big initiatives and is definitely a market marketing genius,
Speaker 1: very type a personality, very charismatic, but also can rub
Speaker 1: people the wrong way. You know, he's he's got a
Speaker 1: very specific vision and if you don't fall in line
Speaker 1: with it, there can be lots of friction. Well so
Speaker 1: is shy Agassie. But I guess he perhaps had a
Speaker 1: less um strategic approach, a methodical Yeah. So that grandiose
Speaker 1: plan was to be able to come up with a
Speaker 1: system and infrastructure that would support a fleet of electric vehicles,
Speaker 1: where in ideal situations, you could get an entire country,
Speaker 1: in this case Israel, to switch from gasoline powered vehicles
Speaker 1: to electric vehicles. Uh. And I mean it was he
Speaker 1: he was starting to make promises before there was any
Speaker 1: kind of idea of a company, let alone a business plan,
Speaker 1: Like there wasn't even there wasn't even a thing to
Speaker 1: have a business plan yet, and he was already starting
Speaker 1: to make these sort of big promises. Um. He and
Speaker 1: another guy uh started to think up, Uh, you know what,
Speaker 1: how could we how can we create a proposal for this?
Speaker 1: And that other guy would be Um Andresor, who was
Speaker 1: CEO of a company called Bioprocessors, And they wrote a
Speaker 1: white paper called Transforming Global Transportation, which became kind of
Speaker 1: a rock star white paper at various conferences around the world. Right, like,
Speaker 1: of course you've read Transforming Global Transportation, And even people
Speaker 1: who used to work for Better Lace are still like,
Speaker 1: even after all the the crazy kind of roller coaster
Speaker 1: events that they've gone through, and even uh, even after
Speaker 1: the ones who will say, like you, I guess it
Speaker 1: kind of went off the reservation, Uh, they will still
Speaker 1: cite this paper as being an inspirational paper. So it's
Speaker 1: not that necessarily the ideas were bad. It's just a
Speaker 1: question whether or not they were actionable and the way
Speaker 1: that the Better Place went about it, right, the application
Speaker 1: of of these ideas, And you know, I'm I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna get on one little soapbox here, Jonathan. It's true
Speaker 1: that the state of global transportation and the state of
Speaker 1: global energy supply is ultimately the way it's going now.
Speaker 1: It's unsustainable, and sure, it's it's not gonna be a
Speaker 1: perpetual motion machine, and it's it can be often politically
Speaker 1: charged for people to say that, but especially as you
Speaker 1: and I were talking about off air earlier, especially in
Speaker 1: the case of Israel, neighbor neighbor, too many uh nations
Speaker 1: with which it has at best, and a sense of
Speaker 1: animosity right there there's certainly huge amounts of conflict between
Speaker 1: Israel and a lot of oil producing nations. So Israel
Speaker 1: has some very politically motivated reasons to get off of
Speaker 1: the dependency on oil. The United States is not that
Speaker 1: much different in many ways. If you look back to
Speaker 1: the proposals under the the Bush administration about moving to
Speaker 1: a hydrogen based economy, one of the big incentives was
Speaker 1: for uh, for for this this national security reason to
Speaker 1: get off of the dependency for oil. And so it's
Speaker 1: not just this environmental approach, although that's largely the way
Speaker 1: Better Place was positioned because it's it's a feel good
Speaker 1: way of saying, hey, this is an impor and technology
Speaker 1: to invest in, but from a uh, you know, just
Speaker 1: a national security standpoint, it also had real importance. So
Speaker 1: this is something we have to address because otherwise no
Speaker 1: one would have sunk money into this this venture. And
Speaker 1: as it turns out, people sunk a lot of money
Speaker 1: into it. Oh yeah, let's see. So the first the
Speaker 1: first round, because it was first, they got a hundred
Speaker 1: million from one investor alone, just a hundred million, plus
Speaker 1: thirty million of his own particular his own fund, so
Speaker 1: a hundred million from his company and thirty million more
Speaker 1: from him, and then ultimately they raised another two hundred million.
Speaker 1: So I think you you know, some reports say two
Speaker 1: hundred fifty million. Ultimately you're looking around three hundred million
Speaker 1: in that initial funding round, and that is a lot
Speaker 1: of money, don't know if you realize this. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: so one of the reasons we can talk about, uh,
Speaker 1: this being a great case study is that if you
Speaker 1: look at the dot com era, the dot com bubble burst,
Speaker 1: one of the things that that people bring up over
Speaker 1: and over is how these companies that didn't have any
Speaker 1: sort of way of generating revenue, they had no product,
Speaker 1: yet we're getting crazy amounts of venture capital early, early,
Speaker 1: early in their phase in their life cycle, and it
Speaker 1: meant that you had people with tons of capital, were
Speaker 1: burned through and no real incentive to rain all that
Speaker 1: in and take a very methodical and and conservative approach
Speaker 1: to building a business plan. Yeah. I think that's a
Speaker 1: really good point because in when you first brought up
Speaker 1: this idea, this this seems like such a fantastic comparison. Now,
Speaker 1: of course it's not exactly apples to apples, but but
Speaker 1: with so much money to to have all of this
Speaker 1: cash and none of the focus required the strategy right.
Speaker 1: If you had a smaller investment, then you would be
Speaker 1: forced to focus on how do you how do you
Speaker 1: bring about this idea of creating a an infrastructure that
Speaker 1: will support electric vehicles throughout an entire nation. You know,
Speaker 1: if you have a limited budget, then you have to say,
Speaker 1: all right, we can't do everything, so let's focus on
Speaker 1: what we can do and prioritize what we can do,
Speaker 1: and that way we can really focus, be really really careful,
Speaker 1: and we can build incrementally. When you get this huge investment,
Speaker 1: then you think, hey, we can do everything. So let's
Speaker 1: let's do you know, let's have first of all, let's
Speaker 1: have crazy amenities. You know, let's let's do that startup
Speaker 1: thing where you have the uh the headquarters office that
Speaker 1: has all the bells and whistles. Yeah, yeah, exactly, that
Speaker 1: kind of thing, the the infinity swimming pool that's in
Speaker 1: the executive lounge, that kind of musical guests, yes, you
Speaker 1: know who knows, uh, we do. We will talk more
Speaker 1: about that a little bit late or two. Not the
Speaker 1: musical guest part, beside the crazy amenities. And it just
Speaker 1: meant that you lacked that focus and that was probably
Speaker 1: one of the many reasons because this this is a
Speaker 1: complex issue. It's not like you can point at one
Speaker 1: thing and say this is the reason this ultimately failed.
Speaker 1: That's yeah, that's that's an excellent point too, because one
Speaker 1: of the one of the valuable things that a dissection
Speaker 1: of this situation does is it helps give us a
Speaker 1: behind the curtain look at why so many similar companies
Speaker 1: fail or succeed. And and when we look at when
Speaker 1: we look at a lot of these companies, here's the
Speaker 1: thing that gets me. Um. One thing a lot of
Speaker 1: companies have in common with this, whether it's auto or
Speaker 1: just pure tech, is that there is very easily a
Speaker 1: cult of personality that forms. Yes, yes, as I mean,
Speaker 1: we see that in over and over again, right uh.
Speaker 1: And it depends on the personality how that cult ends
Speaker 1: up kind of being uh projected, like how how the
Speaker 1: fans fall in line, because you could say that about
Speaker 1: Bill Gates, could certainly say that about Steve Jobs Elon
Speaker 1: Musk very very similar. So you can see this over
Speaker 1: and over. Not every company has like the figurehead that
Speaker 1: people identify around. Sometimes it's more around a brand and
Speaker 1: not a person, but you still get this kind of
Speaker 1: cult of personality. It is just depending on whether or
Speaker 1: not it it forms around an individual or around just
Speaker 1: a brand identity. Now, we haven't really talked about what
Speaker 1: they had planned on doing, and that's largely because they
Speaker 1: didn't have a really firm um plan in place until
Speaker 1: after the company itself had formed. Now the company formed
Speaker 1: in two thousand seven, and generally speaking, the plan was
Speaker 1: to seek out government subsidies and tax incentives to try
Speaker 1: and develop a positive environment for electric vehicles, and that
Speaker 1: Better Place would partner car manufacturers to develop cars that
Speaker 1: would be electric, that would have specific types of battery
Speaker 1: packs that would be compatible with what Better Place would provide,
Speaker 1: which would be charging stations and battery swapping stations. So
Speaker 1: the idea would be, if you bought a car that
Speaker 1: was compatible with Better Places stations, you would be able
Speaker 1: to recharge there and get your battery swapped out for
Speaker 1: a subscription fee. This, this to me, was fascinating, this
Speaker 1: idea that that Agassi had of how about we create
Speaker 1: a company that's similar to cell phones. Yeah, you buy
Speaker 1: a you buy a package and a service, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you get a subsidized car that would be like a
Speaker 1: subsidized cell phone. This would be like the way cell
Speaker 1: phone plans traditionally have been in the United States. It's
Speaker 1: not like that all around the world. You know, there's
Speaker 1: some places in the world where you buy the unsubsidized
Speaker 1: phone full price, but then your monthly service services are
Speaker 1: less than what do we get in the US. In
Speaker 1: the US, you buy a subsidized phone, but then you're
Speaker 1: under contract for you know, usually two years is typical,
Speaker 1: and you get you know, you're paying for that really
Speaker 1: in those those fees month to month as opposed to
Speaker 1: buying it all up front. Well, he was talking about
Speaker 1: doing a similar thing with cars, where your purchase price
Speaker 1: for a car would be lower. He was saying at
Speaker 1: the time Agassy that the electric vehicles would be about
Speaker 1: half of what you would get for a uh comparable
Speaker 1: gasoline powered car, which had other experts in the field
Speaker 1: scratching their heads and say, say, what, how are you
Speaker 1: making this promise? How can you promise to produce an
Speaker 1: electric vehicle for that low because we're building electric vehicles
Speaker 1: and it is expensive. Yeah, even if you build them
Speaker 1: like gangbusters. That's the thing that's something that even Ellen
Speaker 1: Musk has not reached yet. The economy of scale, right yeah.
Speaker 1: He His for approach was to go with let's build
Speaker 1: the sexiest electric vehicle we can, which was the Tesla Roadster.
Speaker 1: And sure enough, there are people who are like, man,
Speaker 1: that thing just looks like it looks like it's fast
Speaker 1: when it's standing still. Yeah, let's have celebrities drive it,
Speaker 1: Let's have let's have people, let's influence the influencers. Right,
Speaker 1: so we're getting people who are not just celebrities but
Speaker 1: also business leaders, particularly since they were catering mainly to
Speaker 1: San Francisco, they were getting all the other tech company leaders,
Speaker 1: you know, like Google for example, getting really interested in
Speaker 1: these vehicles. And then they said, what we'll do is
Speaker 1: will continue to court the high end market. At first,
Speaker 1: We'll use that money to build out an infrastructure, supercharging stations,
Speaker 1: things like that. That's what you're starting to see now
Speaker 1: with the super charging stations being built across the United States.
Speaker 1: Even in states where it is not currently legal to
Speaker 1: buy a vehicle, you have to leave the state to
Speaker 1: buy it. It's not that it's illegal to drive it.
Speaker 1: It's perfectly legal to drive the vehicles. But because of
Speaker 1: you know, that's an entirely different episode, but because of
Speaker 1: issues with car dealerships because Tesla they sell the cars direct,
Speaker 1: right direct to the customer, unlike all other auto manufacturers
Speaker 1: that go through dealerships. Right, the big three give wholesale
Speaker 1: to a dealership who then sells to the end user.
Speaker 1: With with Tesla, you're right, that is ah, that is
Speaker 1: a different bag of badgers or a box of circuits.
Speaker 1: But um, but it is really important to say because
Speaker 1: I think that's a brilliant comparison. When we look at this,
Speaker 1: if we compare better Place and Tesla, one of the
Speaker 1: big big differences, right, maybe I would submit to you
Speaker 1: the biggest difference is that Tesla said one car, make
Speaker 1: it awesome, top of the market, and then baby steps
Speaker 1: and and better Place. Their approach was, let's try and
Speaker 1: aim for the moderate car, the basic car market, trying
Speaker 1: to hit at your average consumer, right, go for that person,
Speaker 1: and then you will end up just just hitting that
Speaker 1: across the entire market, which in this case really was Israel,
Speaker 1: like we were saying before, although there were plans, grandiose
Speaker 1: plans again to immediately expand in other markets like Denmark
Speaker 1: in Australia. Those were the three original ones Israel, Denmark,
Speaker 1: Australia and with more plans of expanding into the United
Speaker 1: States and other countries as well. Now you you also
Speaker 1: had you had also mentioned before. This is good because
Speaker 1: when we talk about the cult of personality and the beginning,
Speaker 1: people really on board with better place. And he even
Speaker 1: um he even made an appearance at TED conference. Right
Speaker 1: in two thousand nine, he took the stage at TED conference.
Speaker 1: He laid us plan of selling millions of electronic vehicles
Speaker 1: in Israel. He supported it with this idea of the infrastructure.
Speaker 1: They wanted to make the charging stations in the battery
Speaker 1: swapping stations. And you know, it was a compel argument,
Speaker 1: the idea of look, we're not saying build an electric
Speaker 1: vehicle with no support. We're saying, let's partner with electrical
Speaker 1: vehicles like some manufacturers, uh, and partner with them to
Speaker 1: produce vehicles. Will also produce the infrastructure by building out
Speaker 1: these charging stations and battery swapping stations, and then there'll
Speaker 1: be no excuse to not swap over. You just tell
Speaker 1: the customer, hey, look, it's a cheap vehicle because we're
Speaker 1: subsidizing it. It's lower than your car. Note if you
Speaker 1: bought a gas vehicle, yeah, you don't have to you'll
Speaker 1: have a subscription where you'll end up paying a certain
Speaker 1: amount per month, but look, it's going to be lower
Speaker 1: than your gas bill would be like to to pay
Speaker 1: for the fuel to fuel your car, right, and you'll
Speaker 1: even be able to charge it at home. I mean,
Speaker 1: think about some of the promises were crazy, Like you
Speaker 1: could have a basic charging cable installed in your house
Speaker 1: for free, or you could pay five bucks and get
Speaker 1: a robot automated charging station you pull. Imagine pulling into
Speaker 1: your garage and a robotic arm jets and style plugs
Speaker 1: into your vehicle without you having to do anything else.
Speaker 1: And that's just five hundred bucks a five dollar installation
Speaker 1: fee to have a fully automated robot arm doing this perfectly.
Speaker 1: And this had people excited at ted. I mean they
Speaker 1: got like one of the crazy super long standing ovation.
Speaker 1: Whereas you had probably a few people in that audience,
Speaker 1: I would imagine a few people who might have had
Speaker 1: I don't know, some experience with robotics, let's say experts. Yeah,
Speaker 1: people who perhaps worked in the auto industry. Those folks
Speaker 1: were probably still sitting in their chairs thinking, hang on,
Speaker 1: how can you promise this this free cable installation when
Speaker 1: something like that has real cost. I mean, that's incredibly
Speaker 1: expensive to put in by itself, let alone a robotic
Speaker 1: one that is fully automated. And you know, you that's
Speaker 1: so much research and development to test a system like that,
Speaker 1: To build a system, test it, make sure that it
Speaker 1: works properly. You don't want to have, you know, a
Speaker 1: robot arm that's just blindly trying to plug in a
Speaker 1: cable and scratching up your vehicle. It's trying to charge
Speaker 1: your cat. Yes, exactly right. You know the next thing,
Speaker 1: you know, Fluffy's got a couple hundred volts running through her.
Speaker 1: That's not that's not good business, right, Well, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: And even if we look at it from the angle
Speaker 1: of the proprietary nature, which is another sticky thing in
Speaker 1: these kind of private public partnerships. Right, you're the idea
Speaker 1: of sure, you can buy this vehicle from this manufacturer
Speaker 1: and you can charge it at these stations, But if
Speaker 1: you buy an electric vehicle from any other manufacturer, it's
Speaker 1: not compatible with these charging stations. See that's all right, ben.
Speaker 1: Let me ask you this. Let's say that you, as
Speaker 1: a consumer, go to an auto dealership and you're looking
Speaker 1: at a line of let's say it's a used car dealership.
Speaker 1: Even sound because now you're talking about all sorts of
Speaker 1: different auto manufacturers being represented on this one lot, right,
Speaker 1: Because otherwise, if you go to a dealership, you're looking
Speaker 1: at like a you know, let's say it's a Toyota dealership,
Speaker 1: they're all Toyota vehicles. But if you go to a
Speaker 1: used car dealership, you might see Toyota's, you might see
Speaker 1: you know, cars from General Motors, you might see cars
Speaker 1: from Forward, you might you know, all of those could
Speaker 1: be represented in a big used car lot. If you
Speaker 1: buy a gas powered vehicle and then you need to
Speaker 1: refuel your vehicle, Um, do you have to worry about
Speaker 1: what kind of fueling station you pull into in general? Now,
Speaker 1: because any fueling station you go to is going to
Speaker 1: have fuel pumps that fit all cars because that's standardized. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So you don't have to worry, Like if you bought
Speaker 1: a car from Toyota, or you bought a car from Ford,
Speaker 1: or you bought a car from anywhere else that was
Speaker 1: a gasoline powered vehicle, then any gas station you pull
Speaker 1: into you can be confident the gas pumps are compatible
Speaker 1: with your car. But now, let's say you on an
Speaker 1: electric vehicle. Let's say it's a Tesla, for example, And
Speaker 1: let's say that there are other cars like Better Place.
Speaker 1: Let's say the Better Place also had cars out on
Speaker 1: the market. Now you've got a vehicle that has a
Speaker 1: proprietary port that you have to plug into, which means
Speaker 1: that only certain types of plugs are going to fit
Speaker 1: your vehicle and others will not. Now you have to
Speaker 1: worry about where you can go to recharge your vehicle. Now,
Speaker 1: most of these electric vehicles are going to have some
Speaker 1: sort of of plug in to it so that you
Speaker 1: can go into a an electric vehicle charging station and
Speaker 1: have some kind of standardized approach. But if you want
Speaker 1: a supercharger like the Tesla supercharge approach, that's proprietary. And
Speaker 1: that's also the one that will give you a half
Speaker 1: charge of your vehicle in twenty minutes, which is still
Speaker 1: crazy science fiction stuff to me. Man. Yeah, And and
Speaker 1: although it's crazy science fiction stuff, if you're a motorist
Speaker 1: and you are on your way from point A to
Speaker 1: point B, the thought of spending twenty minutes to get
Speaker 1: a half charge on your vehicle, it's probably probably something
Speaker 1: you're not crazy about. Forget the fact that you're probably
Speaker 1: gonna go way further than you necessarily need to on
Speaker 1: a half charge. Right, You're you're driving range these days
Speaker 1: is pretty decent um from just a a an idea
Speaker 1: of I have to stop and refuel my vehicle. That's
Speaker 1: not a very attractive proposition, right. Yeah. One of the
Speaker 1: one of the great buzzwords for that is range anxiety, yes,
Speaker 1: which was one of the things that Better Place was
Speaker 1: trying to address. Right. They were saying that by building
Speaker 1: out this infrastructure throughout an entire country and to allow
Speaker 1: the battery swapping, which was a big one them. Tesla's
Speaker 1: also looking into that as well. Uh, it means that
Speaker 1: you would take away this range anxiety, right because you
Speaker 1: could just pull into one of these stations, and because
Speaker 1: you have put them throughout the entire country, you could
Speaker 1: swap it out. However, again, if you wanted to ever
Speaker 1: have as a consumer the freedom of choice to buy
Speaker 1: a different electric vehicle, you can't avail yourself to those
Speaker 1: kind of stations because they're not compatible. Nope, you have
Speaker 1: to hope somebody makes an adapter at best or that
Speaker 1: they build out comparable stations so that you end up
Speaker 1: having these side by side, Like, I can imagine a
Speaker 1: refueling station where all right, here's where Tesla drivers have
Speaker 1: to pull in. Here's where Better Place drivers would have
Speaker 1: had to have pulled in had that actually continue to work.
Speaker 1: Here's here's another thing. Now there's a bit of a tangent.
Speaker 1: So so forgive me on this, sure, but can you
Speaker 1: imagine how how angry you would be if you did
Speaker 1: something that was like the equivalent of jail breaking your
Speaker 1: your Better Place vehicle and then it got bricked. Can
Speaker 1: you imagine breaking a car right to the point where
Speaker 1: you can no longer charge it? And yeah, that would
Speaker 1: be And if we're talking about a model that's similar
Speaker 1: to cell phones, this is not something that's out side
Speaker 1: the realm of possible. So this is disturbingly possible or
Speaker 1: or it was. Now one thing I want to go
Speaker 1: back to you said earlier. Um, you made the great
Speaker 1: point that is another thing different to the Tesla model,
Speaker 1: which is the Better Place wanted a network of cars
Speaker 1: that people could choose from, sort of like how if
Speaker 1: you want an iPhone with Apple, then all you do,
Speaker 1: all you can do is buy some kind of iPhone.
Speaker 1: But what they wanted to do is be more of
Speaker 1: an Android to Tesla's Apple, right, you could buy any
Speaker 1: one of a number of cars. However, it didn't work
Speaker 1: out that way, did it. There was only one manufacturer
Speaker 1: that Better Place was able to work with in the
Speaker 1: history of better Place being around. Better Place was around
Speaker 1: from two thousand seven to two and the only manufacturer,
Speaker 1: and at bed please correct me if you know the pronunciation,
Speaker 1: and I screw it up Renault renew See. I, being
Speaker 1: first of all, being American, I'm ignorant. Second all, being
Speaker 1: a non driver, I'm also doubly ignorant. So Renault Renault,
Speaker 1: which I should have guessed based upon the spelling. Renault
Speaker 1: was the only manufacturer with which Better Place was able
Speaker 1: to form a relationship in its brief existence. And there
Speaker 1: was really only one vehicle that was produced yet, the
Speaker 1: Fluence ze UH. And this was a new vehicle too,
Speaker 1: because it better Place predates the Renault UH. This Fluence
Speaker 1: at least UH that came out in two thousand nine.
Speaker 1: And it's not a bad car, man. It's got a
Speaker 1: it's got a twenty two kilowatt lithium I am battery
Speaker 1: it um. It's range UH is a hundred fifteen miles
Speaker 1: for you and I or for the rest of the world,
Speaker 1: and uh this, you know, this seems like a pretty
Speaker 1: good car to use. Um it's still you know, it's
Speaker 1: still around. You can you can still buy them. They're
Speaker 1: still being maid in uh South Korea, and the ones
Speaker 1: they think made in Israel were are the ones used
Speaker 1: in Israel rather were made in Turkey. So so it's
Speaker 1: it's a legit vehicle. Yeah. The only issue here is
Speaker 1: that now better place no longer has those battery swapping stations.
Speaker 1: They still have some charging stations. We'll talk about that
Speaker 1: when we get towards the end of the podcast. But
Speaker 1: the you know it was it was one of those
Speaker 1: things where if if it had worked, you would have
Speaker 1: had a battery swapping station be able to swap out
Speaker 1: in five minutes. And if you had a subscription where
Speaker 1: you're not paying on that per swap, there's no incentive
Speaker 1: for you to not swap out the battery, right if
Speaker 1: it's covered under your subscription that that you're that comes
Speaker 1: along with buying one of these vehicles. Then you drive in,
Speaker 1: you have your battery swapped out. Takes maybe five minutes,
Speaker 1: but that's about the same amount of time you'd spend
Speaker 1: at a typical fueling station, yes, which goes exactly to um.
Speaker 1: It goes exactly to the fantastic point you made there
Speaker 1: about the difference with You know, no matter how amaze
Speaker 1: seemed from a technical standpoint, it is to charge a
Speaker 1: battery in a half charge of battery in twenty minutes,
Speaker 1: it's still it's still a huge downer when you think, man,
Speaker 1: if I had just had an internal combustion engine, I
Speaker 1: could be on my way already, exactly right. And keep
Speaker 1: in mind, you know, this is also trying to be
Speaker 1: a very special case, right because, as as studies have shown,
Speaker 1: your typical driver, at least in the United States, drives
Speaker 1: at most around forty eight miles in a day. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: if you're driving ranges a hundred and fifteen miles, then
Speaker 1: you you have got that more than covered, which means
Speaker 1: that all you have to do is just remember to
Speaker 1: plug your car in at the end of the day
Speaker 1: and it'll be fully ready for the next day. You
Speaker 1: don't have to worry about that range anxiety really kicking
Speaker 1: in because you've got more than enough capacity. It's when
Speaker 1: you're doing something special, like a long range trip. Let's
Speaker 1: say that we're decided we've we're gonna go to Disneyland.
Speaker 1: We're doing a cross country drive to go to uh Anaheim, California.
Speaker 1: You and I always talk about that, I mean in
Speaker 1: my head, you know, was because you know, fall is
Speaker 1: coming around, and fall that's when they do the Haunted
Speaker 1: Mansion overlay with Nightmare before Christmas, which of course you
Speaker 1: and I both would really left to go on, you know,
Speaker 1: and we gotta go together because that's spooky. Man, you
Speaker 1: don't want to go by yourself. Um. But yeah, if
Speaker 1: we wanted to do a cross country trip, then clearly
Speaker 1: we would need that infrastructure there in order for us
Speaker 1: because we're gonna go so far in a day that
Speaker 1: you could conceivably go beyond that driving range easily conceivably
Speaker 1: hundred and fifteen miles certainly, because uh, you know, it's
Speaker 1: not like we're gonna drive a hundred miles and then
Speaker 1: spend the night and then another hundred miles that's gonna
Speaker 1: take us forever to get out there, right. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: that's a really good point. So this this idea works, um,
Speaker 1: you know, it works in theory. Yeah, And what I
Speaker 1: gotta ask you, man, what happened? Yeah, you know what happened.
Speaker 1: It's actually a laundry list of problems. Sorry. Ultimately, we're
Speaker 1: getting to May two thousand thirteen, when the company had
Speaker 1: declared bankruptcy and ended up being sold for pittance. So
Speaker 1: it raised about a billion dollars a little less more like,
Speaker 1: you know, somewhere between nine million and a billion, but
Speaker 1: it counts between friends, right, it was it was auctioned off.
Speaker 1: It's such a fraction of that. If you add up everything,
Speaker 1: including the assets of the company and its intellectual property,
Speaker 1: it's about twelve million dollars. That's that's a huge, huge
Speaker 1: insult there in a way, I mean, not even insulting.
Speaker 1: It was just sad. Right, Yeah, it's a it's a
Speaker 1: fire sale because of the first question you have to
Speaker 1: ask is what happened to all of this money? It
Speaker 1: didn't evaporate, surely. Yeah. The thing that happened was that
Speaker 1: costs were h we're greatly beyond what was anticipated, and
Speaker 1: the build times were greatly beyond what was anticipated. So
Speaker 1: costs end up spiraling out of control. And they just
Speaker 1: weren't good at at They weren't very good ministers of
Speaker 1: the money, the capital that they had. So first of all,
Speaker 1: let's let's talk about some of the stuff. The building
Speaker 1: out that infrastructure incredibly expensive. They had guests that a
Speaker 1: typical charging station would cost about five thousand dollars. Later
Speaker 1: on it would turn out to be closer to two
Speaker 1: million dollars. So their plans to completely outfit Israel with
Speaker 1: these charging stations. Originally they were looking at a twenty
Speaker 1: million dollar UH cost to completely do the country. Once
Speaker 1: they realized that they were you know, they were one
Speaker 1: quarter lower than what or rather it was gonna cost
Speaker 1: four times as much per station. You know, that's an
Speaker 1: eighty million dollar price tag just for those charging stations alone.
Speaker 1: And you know, then the delays and building that ends
Speaker 1: up adding up more costs, so that was huge. Right. Secondly,
Speaker 1: the partnership between Better Place and other companies only ever
Speaker 1: resulted in that one vehicle, right, the Renaults, the Renault sedan.
Speaker 1: So if you didn't like that car, there was no
Speaker 1: incentive for you to go and buy one, right, you know,
Speaker 1: there was no other choice, So you had this or
Speaker 1: any other like gasoline powered vehicle, which is completely to
Speaker 1: go back to our earlier comparison completely like saying, oh,
Speaker 1: I want to Android phone and uh Google and this
Speaker 1: one manufacturer saying, uh, something very much like the old
Speaker 1: Henry Ford quote. You can have any color model T want,
Speaker 1: so long as it's black, right exactly. Uh. Based upon
Speaker 1: the different reports we've read, essentially somewhere between fourteen hundred
Speaker 1: and fifteen hundred of those cars were sold total period.
Speaker 1: So you can't support a company that has been going
Speaker 1: through a billion dollars in capital by selling four hundred cars.
Speaker 1: The math just doesn't really add up there. Uh. Third,
Speaker 1: that initial heavy funding, like we said, could have been
Speaker 1: the company's undoing. The fact that they had so much
Speaker 1: money to play with early on meant that they did
Speaker 1: not really focus and create a very conservative plan, and
Speaker 1: they ended up doing lots of crazy stuff, including like
Speaker 1: luxurious off spaces. They had a visitor center that was
Speaker 1: meant to be uh kind of an immersive experience to
Speaker 1: explain to you the wonders of the electric vehicle and
Speaker 1: the better place infrastructure, Right, wasn't it? Yeah? You read
Speaker 1: about like it made me think kind of of the uh,
Speaker 1: the World's Fair type things seen an Iron Man. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know those movies where you had this this crazy
Speaker 1: kind of high tech immersive experience that was well beyond
Speaker 1: what you needed. Like the Fast Company article described it
Speaker 1: as being a there was a holographic theater where a
Speaker 1: holographic version of Agassi would would tell you about better place,
Speaker 1: and that the theater had the theater seats weren't just seats,
Speaker 1: they were vintage car seats that were all arranged in
Speaker 1: a certain way. Um. And that there was like a
Speaker 1: mile long track where you could do a test drive
Speaker 1: of an electric vehicle. And it was just one of
Speaker 1: those things where you could see how much money was
Speaker 1: being sunk into selling the idea and not so much
Speaker 1: in making the idea become real. Uh, making the T
Speaker 1: shirts before you get the band together to rehearse. Yes,
Speaker 1: this is making me think of someone we both know, actually,
Speaker 1: but no, it's uh yeah, it's that that whole whole
Speaker 1: idea where you're selling the idea, you're so in love
Speaker 1: with the idea, and you're so convinced the idea is
Speaker 1: a good idea that you're spending all your time convincing
Speaker 1: everyone else it's a great idea and not spending the
Speaker 1: time actually making the idea happen. We we actually mentioned
Speaker 1: this also off the air. Creative folks know this. You
Speaker 1: don't talk about your book before you write your book.
Speaker 1: You know, don't talk about your screenplay before you're finished
Speaker 1: writing your screenplay. You are setting yourself up for failure
Speaker 1: when you start talking about a project before you've actually
Speaker 1: finished the project. I have experienced this personally. I have
Speaker 1: been guilty of doing this. I think every everybody has.
Speaker 1: But luckily for both you and I, uh, when we did,
Speaker 1: when we've done stuff like this in our past, we
Speaker 1: weren't losing almost a billion dollars. No, no, we and
Speaker 1: most we lost maybe something that would have entertained I
Speaker 1: don't know, fifty people at most, a little bit of
Speaker 1: self respect. I'm gonna be candid, yes, okay, I mean
Speaker 1: there's only so much more of that I can lose
Speaker 1: before I'm I'm just tapped out. But even this wasn't
Speaker 1: These three reasons were not the only reasons. No, uh,
Speaker 1: you need to look at some pretty nasty other reasons too.
Speaker 1: I mean, okay, so we've got incredibly complex organization, right.
Speaker 1: They had offices in Israel for a while. Their headquarters
Speaker 1: was in Palo Alto, California. That's where Agassi was living,
Speaker 1: was in Palo Alto. Uh. He at one point decided
Speaker 1: to take a vacation, took a long vacation, like half
Speaker 1: a year, vacation, went to Israel, metal woman, decided to
Speaker 1: essentially separate from his wife and start dating this woman, uh,
Speaker 1: and decided to relocate to Israel. And so now he
Speaker 1: had changed the global head orders to Israel, not to
Speaker 1: Palo Alto, which ruffled a lot of feathers in the company.
Speaker 1: But the company also got so complex that they had
Speaker 1: to hire an outside management firm to come in and
Speaker 1: try and make sense of everything. It just it balloons
Speaker 1: so quickly. And I guess he also there was some
Speaker 1: nepotism going on. He hired a lot of his own
Speaker 1: family to be in very important positions, none of which,
Speaker 1: by the way, none of the people in his executive
Speaker 1: team had any experience in the auto industry, right, or
Speaker 1: in green technology, very important, two big strikes. Right as
Speaker 1: far as I know, none of the top executives were
Speaker 1: civil engineers either. So you're trying to build out an
Speaker 1: infrastructure for an electric vehicle, which is a green technology,
Speaker 1: and you don't have experts in any of those areas
Speaker 1: occupying the top positions in the in the company. Now,
Speaker 1: on top of that, there are also lots of reports.
Speaker 1: The Fast Company piece particularly spelled this out that Agassi
Speaker 1: has um he's he's not necessarily a humble in adividual.
Speaker 1: He's quite the self promoter. And even going back to
Speaker 1: that those early days with the white paper, he started
Speaker 1: to liken the work that they were proposing, keep in
Speaker 1: mind they hadn't built anything at this point, but saying
Speaker 1: that it was going to be transformative, like the work
Speaker 1: by Edison or even James Watt. So these are the
Speaker 1: folks who you know who brought electricity to the world. Really,
Speaker 1: they were the ones who helped build out that infrastructure
Speaker 1: like Promethean pretty much. Yeah, and he's saying, look, we're
Speaker 1: gonna do the same thing without even having done anything yet.
Speaker 1: It was all like, it's very easy to talk about it,
Speaker 1: it's really hard to do. As as what they he learned.
Speaker 1: He also said that he kind of implied he had
Speaker 1: the qualities of the bravery of Churchill, the vision of JFK,
Speaker 1: the determination of Reagan. So we're suggesting that Hubrists may
Speaker 1: have played a part in the failure of this company. Um.
Speaker 1: And it was funny because you know, he he actually
Speaker 1: went public with this idea. This is that going back
Speaker 1: to that you don't talk about it before you do it.
Speaker 1: He went public with the idea for a better place
Speaker 1: before he even quit his previous job. He was at
Speaker 1: another job for another like three or four months before
Speaker 1: he quit, and he and really, you know, he said,
Speaker 1: he talks about in the interviews about how oh yeah,
Speaker 1: after I announced this, just a few days later, I
Speaker 1: quit my job and I started better place. Now what
Speaker 1: happened was he talked about it, and then three months
Speaker 1: later the job where he was he had thought he
Speaker 1: was going to become the next CEO, and they went
Speaker 1: with someone else, and then he quit his job and
Speaker 1: started better place. Not saying that the things are definitely connected,
Speaker 1: but you know, in hindsight, it looks like that. So yeah.
Speaker 1: He also talked about ordering a hundred thousand Renault cars
Speaker 1: between two thousand eleven and two thousand sixteen. Like to
Speaker 1: have a hundred thousand a fleet of these cars to
Speaker 1: sell to the Israeli market. Uh. And eventually he said
Speaker 1: Israel and Denmark numbers here. Yeah. Yeah, So a hundred
Speaker 1: thousand cars in Israel would account for more than half
Speaker 1: of all new cars for the car market. So in
Speaker 1: other words, you're looking at fewer than two hundred thousand
Speaker 1: new cars in Israel are going to be purchased in
Speaker 1: any given year. That's just how big that market is.
Speaker 1: And he was expecting to have more than half of
Speaker 1: that market made up of the better place cars. Now, no,
Speaker 1: not a single car manufacturer has a share over fift
Speaker 1: of that market. Young Day is the one that has
Speaker 1: the biggest So I think it's home Day. I might
Speaker 1: be wrong about that, but I know that it was.
Speaker 1: So that means that not only would he be dominating
Speaker 1: the new car market, but suddenly consumer behavior would completely
Speaker 1: change and instead of people being interested in various types
Speaker 1: of cars, everyone would suddenly be focused on this one car.
Speaker 1: Keep in mind, there's only one model available and it
Speaker 1: was a Sedan. So if he didn't want a sedan,
Speaker 1: then you know you, I don't know why you would
Speaker 1: end up buying this car. And if you had a
Speaker 1: larger family then like there's so many situations, Jeff, larger
Speaker 1: family or you're you're just a college student buying their
Speaker 1: first car, and cars can be very difficult to afford.
Speaker 1: It made it's kind of tough for uh, it's kind
Speaker 1: of tough to get in the United States. If you
Speaker 1: if you've never lived somewhere else, You've never really read
Speaker 1: about this. But the United States having such a car culture,
Speaker 1: sure it becomes sort of expected that someone will have
Speaker 1: a car, and there are these rites of passage for it.
Speaker 1: But that is not in any way the case across
Speaker 1: the rest of the world. A car is a big
Speaker 1: investment here, it's a huge investment in other places where
Speaker 1: you know, cost of living and housing and uh, basic
Speaker 1: staples of food are more expensive. To begin with, just
Speaker 1: the layout of cities, because a lot of these cities
Speaker 1: are so old that you know, they're not laid out
Speaker 1: for vehicles, like for cars, Yeah, very narrow streets, Yeah,
Speaker 1: just so. And so the question then becomes, you know, uh,
Speaker 1: what more of a more of a thing, like what
Speaker 1: do I have to do as a car company to
Speaker 1: convince you to spend all this money and take on
Speaker 1: all this bird in this inconveniences ownership? And I think
Speaker 1: there was a miscalculation there. Yeah, well, considering that they
Speaker 1: only sold a hundred cars in the first couple of
Speaker 1: months that they had cars to sell, and most of
Speaker 1: those customers were better place employees, I think you're right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and just just wasn't gonna happen. What was that thing
Speaker 1: you said in the beginning. Uh, it was one of
Speaker 1: those robot arms statements. Oh, the car will be cheap
Speaker 1: because it would be subsidized because you would have the
Speaker 1: subscription fee. It turned out that the cost of producing
Speaker 1: these was so high. Uh. And and Renault was the
Speaker 1: only company that they were working with, right. I guess
Speaker 1: you said that he was hoping, or at least the
Speaker 1: people around him said that what he was trying to
Speaker 1: do was entice other car manufacturers to join in as well,
Speaker 1: and then the company Better Place would have a lot
Speaker 1: more leverage, right, because they could put the different car
Speaker 1: manufacturers against each other and say, hey, you want to
Speaker 1: sell this car to us for thirty eight thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: but we can get a car from this other company
Speaker 1: for you know, eighteen thousand dollars. So you're gonna have
Speaker 1: to cut some some money off of that price tag
Speaker 1: and then they could pass that on to the Better
Speaker 1: Place customers. But that never happened. Well. And also, to
Speaker 1: be absolutely fair, that strategy is a viable one. But
Speaker 1: there's um, there's there's one point that that I think
Speaker 1: we should make for anybody who who wonders why there
Speaker 1: are so few car companies in the world because if
Speaker 1: you think about it, there there's so many cars, Jonathan,
Speaker 1: and there there's so many uh. There there's so few
Speaker 1: rather car manufacturers, and there are countries that have no
Speaker 1: domestic car manufacturing because the amount of quote unquote moving parts,
Speaker 1: the difficulty of all that, the starting capital you need
Speaker 1: in order to get into that business is is gigantic, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: like a lot of businesses, less small businesses fail uh
Speaker 1: in the first five years. And with startup car companies
Speaker 1: it's even more difficult, uh, and and even more attrition
Speaker 1: in that space. So Tesla, my friend, is a diamond
Speaker 1: in the rough. It's um. I wouldn't say winning the
Speaker 1: lottery because I don't think it's entirely luck based, but
Speaker 1: this is um. But it's a very it's a very
Speaker 1: interesting contrast to what better place was, right. And then
Speaker 1: on top of all that, I mean there were times
Speaker 1: where Agassi was actually saying that he could even see
Speaker 1: them giving away a car, like you would get the
Speaker 1: subscription fee and then you would get a car like
Speaker 1: in the cell phone like truly subsidized to the point
Speaker 1: where you're not paying for the car, you're just paying
Speaker 1: for the service. Uh, and uh, that never, that never,
Speaker 1: that was never a possibility with they're the way they
Speaker 1: were doing business at that point. And that's a U.
Speaker 1: But that's a that's kind of a more of a
Speaker 1: pure tech strategy too, isn't Because don't um, didn't you
Speaker 1: tell me earlier or maybe I just heard on this
Speaker 1: show a while back about during Console Wars, some of
Speaker 1: the console makers will, yeah, they sell it a loss
Speaker 1: and they make it up in games. Now. That only works,
Speaker 1: of course, if you are in the business of making games,
Speaker 1: and if you have more than one game. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: you are just making one game, which is essentially what
Speaker 1: better place was doing. If you have one game and
Speaker 1: not everyone once that game, and in fact, very few
Speaker 1: people won that game, he can't really support selling the
Speaker 1: console at a loss. So that was a big issue.
Speaker 1: And then, uh, you know, there was a lot of
Speaker 1: friction between Agassi and his executive team. They were starting
Speaker 1: to get really upset with his move from Palo Alto
Speaker 1: to Israel. Uh, he ended up hiring a lot of
Speaker 1: his girlfriends, friends and positions when they said that that
Speaker 1: even watered down this already kind of weak executive team.
Speaker 1: People who weren't really you know, some of them are
Speaker 1: really good. What they did is just that what they
Speaker 1: did was not aligned with running an auto company. And
Speaker 1: so first he was asked to kind of become a
Speaker 1: figurehead and he refused. Eventually he was forced out. He
Speaker 1: was fired as CEO in October two thousand and twelve
Speaker 1: UM and he was replaced by Evan Thornley, who was
Speaker 1: the CEO of Better Place Australia. Because they had set
Speaker 1: up headquarters in all the countries they were planning on
Speaker 1: operating in Australia, Israel, and of course they had the
Speaker 1: Palo Alto office in the United States. So at that
Speaker 1: time the company had lost about four million dollars and
Speaker 1: not just gone through the capital, I mean they were
Speaker 1: in the hole. And then they were losing about a
Speaker 1: half million dollars per day. So Thornley, he was a
Speaker 1: businessman and politician back in Australia, he actually had a
Speaker 1: lot of interesting things to say that Fast Company article
Speaker 1: where he was talking about the how some of the
Speaker 1: horrible deals that Agassi had gotten into. Agassi had had
Speaker 1: given all these companies contracts and then given these they
Speaker 1: they had these huge cancelation fees. Actually hadn't really um
Speaker 1: uh negotiated with the companies at all, so he was
Speaker 1: essentially saying, like they would say, all right, well, if
Speaker 1: you cancel out of this, you're gonna owe US X
Speaker 1: million dollars, and he said, sure, signs on the dieline.
Speaker 1: And so there was no way to get out of
Speaker 1: the contracts. And in fact, the only way they could
Speaker 1: have maybe kept the company going would be if they
Speaker 1: were able to expand into other markets, but they had
Speaker 1: already that was that meant that they had to start
Speaker 1: spending even more money. So it was just this kind
Speaker 1: of deep cavern that he found himself in. And uh,
Speaker 1: he wasn't given a long time to really try and
Speaker 1: establish anything. He was put in place in October two,
Speaker 1: twelve thornly that is, and uh then in January he
Speaker 1: was fired, So he had only had a couple of
Speaker 1: months to really try and work anything. I don't know that.
Speaker 1: I don't know that anyone could have turned things around
Speaker 1: so dramatically in that period to make everyone happy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what what could he have possibly done? Because those
Speaker 1: kind of agreements are pretty ironclad. Yeah, it's not like
Speaker 1: he was the one who signed them either, So that
Speaker 1: was kind of crazy. So eventually they were purchased by Sunrise.
Speaker 1: They declared bankruptcy. Better Place to declare, liquidated its assets
Speaker 1: what what little there were. Sunrise U bought the company
Speaker 1: said that they would keep on fifty of the eighty
Speaker 1: employees um and that they would operate fifteen charging stations
Speaker 1: in Israel for at least two years. All the battery
Speaker 1: swapping stations gone, fifteen charging stations would be all that
Speaker 1: would remain, and ultimately they had sold about vehicles. And
Speaker 1: so that's kind of the end of the Better Place story.
Speaker 1: And again this kind of it's a it's a really
Speaker 1: good parallel to that dot Com. It's that idea of
Speaker 1: here's an incredible opportunity, and the opportunity is real, there's
Speaker 1: a there's a real opportunity to seize uh, and there's
Speaker 1: a real way of actually making it work. The exa
Speaker 1: ample for dot com would be Amazon. Amazon came out
Speaker 1: around the time of the dot com boom and survived.
Speaker 1: It survived and then later thrived, but it it had
Speaker 1: a real rough, slow start, and it was only through
Speaker 1: taking a fairly conservative approach, taking risks where there were
Speaker 1: risks to be had, but not doing so, not just
Speaker 1: not just saying, oh, well, we're just going to sell
Speaker 1: everything to everyone everywhere. That wasn't what Amazon said it. First,
Speaker 1: they concentrated on books, That's what they did, and it
Speaker 1: was only after building out that business they started to
Speaker 1: kind of grow, and they did so in a very uh,
Speaker 1: very strategic way, still taking risks again when they could better.
Speaker 1: Place was more about let's aim for the pie in
Speaker 1: the sky approach and we're just gonna do everything, or
Speaker 1: at least we're gonna say we're gonna do everything and
Speaker 1: we'll figure out how to do everything later. Yeah. The
Speaker 1: thing is that you can be an idea person, but
Speaker 1: you can't not be an engineer of some sort in
Speaker 1: this sort of space. So like if we look at
Speaker 1: Elon Musk, he he sometimes may come off as a
Speaker 1: big idea of person. You remember, the last time we
Speaker 1: were hanging out on tech stuff, we talked about the hyperloop,
Speaker 1: which is amazing, and if it were anyone other than
Speaker 1: Elon Musk, I would I would say it was just vaporwear.
Speaker 1: But he's led up to this and we've both seen
Speaker 1: in our respect to shows, we've both seen this the
Speaker 1: evolution in this guy. So even though he might sound
Speaker 1: like he's some big idea guy who will vanish in
Speaker 1: some weird Ponzi scheme. Everything he's done for years, He's
Speaker 1: gone to space. At least his company has sent stuff
Speaker 1: to space. Yeah, I mean, it's it's pretty incredible. He
Speaker 1: he backs up, either through his own ingenuity or by
Speaker 1: hiring people who know what they're doing. He has been
Speaker 1: able to, uh to make great headway in his the
Speaker 1: various industries that he's entered into. So, whether hyperloop ever happens,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's an interesting idea. I would love to
Speaker 1: see it happen. Whether it ever happens, I don't know.
Speaker 1: But the fact that he has made such incredible progress
Speaker 1: in electric vehicles in the United States already, and he's
Speaker 1: done it in this very like you know, like we said,
Speaker 1: it's just as flashy in many ways as a Better Place,
Speaker 1: but it was a fundamentally different strategy that actually has worked. Um,
Speaker 1: It's worked slowly. It's a very it's a very gradual progression,
Speaker 1: but it's actually working. It'll be interesting to see if
Speaker 1: that continues. And to me, I think the thing to
Speaker 1: take away from this is that the again, the purpose
Speaker 1: of Better Place was in many ways noble right, this
Speaker 1: idea of getting off of fossil fuels to move to
Speaker 1: a renewable energy source. Keeping in mind that depending upon
Speaker 1: how you generate the electricity, they had said that they
Speaker 1: wanted to make sure that all of their charging stations
Speaker 1: were generating electricity in renewable ways, so either through solar power,
Speaker 1: hydro power, wind power, whatever. Um. You know, as long
Speaker 1: as you're doing that kind of thing and you're being
Speaker 1: responsible with the way you generate electricity, that's wonderful. We
Speaker 1: want to see that happen. And in fact, I don't
Speaker 1: think anyone wanted well maybe some car companies wanted to
Speaker 1: see better place fail, but I don't think anyone really
Speaker 1: wanted a better place to fail. It was just that
Speaker 1: there was They set themselves up for failure, They didn't
Speaker 1: set themselves up for success. Right. It's very I'm really
Speaker 1: glad you said that, because it's very important to note
Speaker 1: that in this context, there were no con men, there
Speaker 1: were no Charlatan's. There were people who were honestly trying
Speaker 1: to get a good idea from the realm of imagination
Speaker 1: into the real world, as you said, and unfortunately, um,
Speaker 1: it looks like what we've learned through our our case
Speaker 1: study of some of this stuff is that it was
Speaker 1: ultimately it was mismanagement more than a little bit of
Speaker 1: ego and a lack of patients. Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 1: I think they were too aggressive to or e and
Speaker 1: too unrealistic. Um. I think, uh, you know, maybe we
Speaker 1: can see sunrise if whether or not after the two
Speaker 1: years or up, if they continue to support those charging stations,
Speaker 1: if we continue to see an effort to move over
Speaker 1: to electric vehicles in Israel in particular because that was
Speaker 1: the main base of operations. Uh, it'll be interesting to
Speaker 1: see if that continues or if it will take something
Speaker 1: like Tesla ultimately making this this approach work really well.
Speaker 1: And of course other companies, other established car companies are
Speaker 1: also producing electric vehicles. They tend to be very like
Speaker 1: a small slice of the overall pie chart, that is
Speaker 1: what they offer. But it's it's something that we will
Speaker 1: continue to see in the future. So then I have
Speaker 1: to thank you for coming onto the show and participating
Speaker 1: in this and talking about this. Uh, this incredible company
Speaker 1: and the I mean it's interesting to really look at
Speaker 1: the drama behind it. And again there's so many lessons
Speaker 1: to learn, not just in the auto industry, but in
Speaker 1: the tech industry in general. We've seen this lesson repeated
Speaker 1: multiple times that it was fun to actually dive into this.
Speaker 1: I had no knowledge of better place before we started
Speaker 1: looking into this, this um this episode, so for me,
Speaker 1: it was really educational. Oh and thank you for the
Speaker 1: email there, Russell, and thank thank you as always Jonathan
Speaker 1: for having me on. If you don't mind, I'd like
Speaker 1: to plug a couple of things absolutely, Okay. First thing
Speaker 1: I want to plug is uh brain Stuff, which is
Speaker 1: our everyday science show. We've got a video series on
Speaker 1: YouTube where listeners you can see Jonathan and myself and
Speaker 1: several other of our fantastic co hosts, including Lauren Lauren.
Speaker 1: I can't believe I forgot to see yes, including including Lauren,
Speaker 1: And you can see Lauren and Jonathan co hosts some
Speaker 1: stuff on there where they answer questions about everything from
Speaker 1: hair to lightsabers and twins. Uh yeah, We've we've got
Speaker 1: some I talk about whether or not a sound is
Speaker 1: so loud can kill you? Lauren, Lauren and Joe McCormick
Speaker 1: have a great video about laugh tracks, which goes into
Speaker 1: my next plug, Jonathan, and that is for forward thinking
Speaker 1: you're plugging stuff that I'm on, Yeah, and plains. I
Speaker 1: don't know if the I don't know if the tech
Speaker 1: stuff listeners UH know about this. I assume that you do.
Speaker 1: But if this is your first time checking out this
Speaker 1: show and you enjoyed it, you can also find more
Speaker 1: future oriented topics, and not just in tech, but the
Speaker 1: big questions of the future. And then of course I
Speaker 1: have to plug car stuff that you are on with
Speaker 1: Scott Benjament, which if you are really and if you're
Speaker 1: if you're into cars, or even if you're just interested
Speaker 1: in it but you've always been intimidated, that's a great
Speaker 1: podcast to listen to because Ben, you are really good
Speaker 1: at uh at at talking to Scott who has an
Speaker 1: incredible expertise and all things automotive, and you really are
Speaker 1: great at having this conversation with him where you can
Speaker 1: really get to the bottom of everything from how specific
Speaker 1: parts of a car work, to trends in vehicles to
Speaker 1: all sorts of stuff. It's a great podcast. Gosh, well,
Speaker 1: thank you so much. We've got to stop our love
Speaker 1: fest here so we will except for us stuff they
Speaker 1: don't want you to know, which I can't talk about,
Speaker 1: but you should shut out, but you know they don't
Speaker 1: want me to say anymore. Yeah redacted. All right, So guys,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for listening. If you have any suggestions,
Speaker 1: like Russell, you can write to us our email addresses
Speaker 1: tech stuffed at health stuff works dot com, or drop
Speaker 1: us a line on Facebook, Twitter or Tumbler or handle it.
Speaker 1: All three is text stuff hs W and we will
Speaker 1: taught to you again really soon for more on this
Speaker 1: and bathands of other topics because it how staff works
Speaker 1: dot com