First All-Electric Subscription Plan: Car 2.0 Pricing
The Deal 
There are two types of membership packages. With the special package, Better Place claims up to a 35% cost savings and provides the user with about 46,603 miles worth of energy for free. The special package is for three years and costs $45,092 for the car, membership, and services (maintenance, navigation, road side assistance), with a limit of 15,500 miles per year. Without the special membership package, the car costs $35,299 with a monthly subscription of $313 for up to 12,427 miles/year, $373 for up to 14,292 miles/year, $422 for up to 16,156 miles/year, and $459.42 for up to $18,641 miles/year. The complete list of what the basic membership package includes is:
1. A four year, fixed-price membership package
2. Installation of private charge spot
3. Unlimited access to Better Place’s network of public charge spots
4. Unlimited access to Better Place’s network of automated battery switch stations
5. Personalized energy management and navigation services via on-board and network software
6. Access to an inventory of batteries with a guaranteed service level agreement
7. 24-hour access to customer service and support, roadside assistance
8. Energy usage
Issues
A 20%-35% cost savings between EVs and combustion vehicles is a bold claim to be made, especially since the overwhelming perception of EVs is that they are far more expensive. Taking a look at the U.S. national average of $3.65 per gallon, it would take $230 per month to pay for driving a regular combustion vehicle in the US (source: Solar Power for Electric Cars). With Better Place’s cheapest subscription, the consumer would only get around 12,000 miles a year for $313 a month. That’s almost $1,000 more a year!
However, intrinsically, with electric cars and with Better Place’s service plan, consumers will have lower maintenance costs and insurance costs, which may make the cars price equivalent. Also, keep in mind that this is the first consumer EV launch in one of the world’s smallest countries. In order for EVs to be successful, they must come in scale. Moore’s law of technology means: every 18-24 months, a technology will become twice as powerful at the same cost, or half as expensive at the previous level of technology. Shai Agassi explains how the electric “eMile” will follow Moore’s law in his TED talk in California with the “eMile” graph. One will have to wait and watch for the EV system to be launched in Australia. This massive launch will be a clearer indicator of whether the battery-swapping system is going to be more economically and systematically feasible than the August launch in Israel.
“What if all we do is sell more cars and trucks”- Bill Ford
In an optimistic long-run scenario for EVs, if they deliver a clean and affordable solution that introduces personal transportation to a growing number of our world’s population, the overcrowding of an already heavily-congested system would be a whole other monumental challenge. Ford has been thinking about this scenario, as explained by Bill Ford in his “A future beyond traffic gridlock” Ted talk.
Social media as well as nano-technology will help us work to conquer this next horizon. With a combination of wireless technology built into our roads and cars, such as haloIPT’s wireless charging in our roads, and EZ pass‘ toll payment system in our cars, combined with social media tools, traffic could be coordinated much more sensibly. In a perfect system, if all of the cars on the road are interacting with each other, accidents could be eliminated and lane management based on priority or payment could be created. The bottom line is that all-electric vehicles could have just as large of an impact on transportation as Henry Ford’s assembly lines.
We are just beginning to see the horizon of the inevitable clean revolution with the first commercial launch of the battery-swapping technology in Israel this August.
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