Renault / Project Better Place shows off new electric sedan prototype

We'd heard Renault was prepping a new electric car in conjunction with EV start-up Project Better Place, but no one had actually seen the thing until its unveiling today in Tel Aviv. The car itself only has a 125 mile range, which is where Project Better Place's network of charging and battery swap stations come in. But since those aren't intended for rollout until 2010 in Israel and Denmark, Renault won't have any EVs immediately available to buyers -- making this consumer-friendly sedan more of a precursor to the supposed $0.5-1 billion the Renault-Nissan alliance are lining up to invest in their respective electric vehicle businesses.

[Via AutoblogGreen]

[Ignatius @ May 11th 2008 10:22PM]

Always two to five years off... I'm getting tired of waiting.

God damnit, why can't we have a car that gets 100-150 miles to charge, can be charged from 120v (or 220v) home electricity and doesn't cost over $40,000?

Oh, and now would be good too. We've had the technology for electric vehicles widespread since the late 90s, why the hell are we playing catch-up now?

Oh, it's two years off, five years off from mass production.. blah blah blaaah... getting tired of waiting. I'm about to just grab my bike and say screw it.

[ugg.tryptophan @ May 11th 2008 10:47PM]

amen

[Ayle @ May 11th 2008 11:00PM]

I think they are waiting for the next oil krash.

[apeguero @ May 11th 2008 11:14PM]

Same feelings here. I only need up to 100 mile range for my daily commuter. That`s all. BTW , is it me or is the front end of this car remind you of a 2001 to 2005 Passat?

[white_ultras @ May 12th 2008 4:06AM]

"why can't we have a car.... "

its all about battery

sufficient energy density (~100 mile range) and longevity battery costs about $10000, unfortunatelly it also lasts like 200 cycles only, so that is why... simple as that, solve the battery problem and the EV revolution might take off

[fanman @ May 12th 2008 7:16AM]

Mind you, at least they haven't done the regular electric car thing and made it look like a 1970's sci-fi extra.

[BlakNinja @ May 11th 2008 10:36PM]

Good job Shai Agassi.. too bad you left SAP, wish you were still here with us and help innovate a bit more.

[D @ May 11th 2008 10:47PM]

I heard one of these start up as I was leaving the driving range. Sounded like iron man powering up.

www.internetdoodles.com

[Mark @ May 11th 2008 10:54PM]

"But since those aren't intended for rollout until 2010 in Israel and Denmark"

Won't come until 2011, and won't be available in North America..where people are fucking sick of high gas prices.

EPIC FAIL.

[DT @ May 12th 2008 12:18AM]

You do realize that gas prices are FAR higher in many places in Europe, and especially in Israel, right? And it makes perfect sense for this to come to SMALL countries first. Most of the population of Israel is in the center of the country, so the overwhelming majority doesn't commute very far at all.

[Sasha S. @ May 12th 2008 3:30AM]

Mark,

This morning in the fair little Kingdom of The Netherlands I paid 1.55 euro per liter which is 9.04 dollars per gallon! So I do what Ignatius suggested: I drive my bicycle more often. Good for the health and good for my wallet.

[chadow @ May 11th 2008 10:54PM]

Average joes make functional electric cars in garages around the world using used cars, salvaged and re purposed parts, and low end motors and batteries....yet they come up with impressive results. Are we actually supposed to believe these large manufacturers cannot put out something affordable and better functioning than they have been? Its utter bull$hit.

[wrabbit @ May 11th 2008 11:55PM]

Let me play the devil's advocate here...

Making a viable electric car in a garage is actually easier in many ways. I mean for one, these companies have to think about making a profitable product, and while I don't agree with how much profit they want, they do need some, otherwise they wouldn't be here. Secondly, for these companies making an electric car doesn't simply mean "making it", it means they have to change their factories to produce the new engines and the new systems - that's not exactly an over-night thing. They also need to retrain their sales and marketing departements so that they actually know what they're talking about when they describe to us the virtues of their electric engine. Basically the bigger the system the slower it adapts.

Having said, I have no doubt that at least some of the reason for how slow this is moving is simply the influence of oil companies. So actually I'm just as pissed as you are :)

[shocklance @ May 12th 2008 12:50AM]

Car manufacturers can make money out of replacement parts on a combustion engine system. The extra vibration and wear and tear from these systems makes it difficult for them to see the value of changing over to a system where near negligible wear and tear is involved, at least in comparison.

[francisco @ May 12th 2008 2:08AM]

In addition i believe they completely need to make sure these batteries and cars don't explode or have something major go off on them. Its easier for someone to make an electric car in their garage because its their fault if something bad happens.

If an electric car explodes or causes serious injury that is made by Big automakers cant you think of the HUGE LAWSUITS that would create? Not only that but the bad Reputation that company would get? Its something that no one should risk.

NOW, i completely agree that everything is always 2,5,10 years away and is pissing me off and it all seems like Vaporware since they have been saying that stuff for the past 10 years.

[Bill @ May 12th 2008 12:30PM]

Average joes don't have access to large-format lithium batteries, which have much higher energy density than lead-acid batteries used in all homebrew conversions.

Lead-acid batteries also have a *very* short lifespan when used in EV conversions - maybe 24 months before they are totally shot.

Automakers know their batteries will have to have very long warranties (realistically, 10 years/100,000 miles) for consumers to accept EVs like the Volt, which is why they're currently testing batteries from different suppliers both in the lab and in "mules" on the road.

[mike @ May 12th 2008 11:07PM]

I'm so tired of hearing about shai agassi, he stole this idea from a bay area company and can't bring this car to market ever in the US due to patent infringement, please stop posting about this guy. PS 2-5 years. How about 6 months. I guarantee that by the end of July some company will be able to deliver these cars in the US and have them ready within 6 months, but more on that later.

[gfar @ May 11th 2008 11:09PM]

Woah, relax guys...if everyone starts buying electric cars my oil stocks will suffer.

Note to self, buy more solar stocks...

[DT @ May 12th 2008 12:20AM]

It's far more likely to be oil plants producing that marvelous electricity than solar plants, at least for the near- to mid-future. Your oil stocks may suffer, but not because of mass adoption of solar-powered cars.

[duffman @ May 12th 2008 1:45AM]

Energy companies certainly have some oil plants, but for the most part they are natual gas, coal, nuke, geothermal, or hydro. In CA no one will give you a permit to build anything other than natural gas or a renewable source. If gas prices keep going up and people start getting rid of those nasty SUV's, some of the smog in SD and LA might actually start going away.

[Beastage @ May 12th 2008 5:34AM]

Amazingly, I doubt the oil companies are in any worries, their little stunt with inflated oil prices to fill their greedy pockets with dollars has allowed them to get huge money reserves that they can invest in changing their business plans.

[Jono @ Aug 15th 2009 8:44AM]

That photo can't be of a Renault. It can't be, because Renault aren't currently capable of making a car without a hideously deformed rear end, and the car in the photo looks quite normal.

[RikF @ May 11th 2008 11:31PM]

One man's hideously deformed is another man's curvaceous and sexy

[Mischa Lockton @ May 12th 2008 12:09AM]

Don't want to piss on the parade, but they were showing this drive around on CNBC the other day already.

[Grandalf @ May 12th 2008 3:43AM]

Looks like it would be a good time to move back to my home country in 2010... or just hop on a train to copenhagen, buy one, and drive back to Gothenburg and be a happy driver :)

Though... I would love an electric car with 250 miles per charge. Distances in Sweden are rather ridiculous, and I frequently drive 125 miles each way, and am then parked in the middle of the forest for an entire weekend... which would then result in an "empty tank" in the car when I want to go home..

[fanman @ May 12th 2008 7:13AM]

And where does the electricity come from?

[Grandalf @ May 12th 2008 5:22PM]

Wind and Water Turbines :)

[Fraer9 @ May 12th 2008 8:13AM]

WTF ?? Renault is a FRENCH company ! Why de they speak about any Israel and Danemark ? What about France ? I know the French governement can't live without gaz taxes but anyway ... WTF ?!

[Russ @ May 12th 2008 9:10AM]

Remember that electric cars were around in the 90s.

[Alfred @ May 13th 2008 9:21AM]

err, um... the electric car was actually around in the 1890s instead of what is popularly reported as the 1990s..........

[Tejlgaard @ May 12th 2008 9:53AM]

Please note that the renaults are already going into regional testing, at least here in Denmark. 150 of them should be here soon...you know, for beta testing.

Why Denmark and Israel?

Israel because the Israeli government kinda don't like the people who sit on top of the oil and would rather like not to depend on it. It's really logical - if you had an internal civil war with a people that was very well repressented and sympathized with amongst all of your surrounding neighboors, if you knew that all of your neighboors really didn't like you, and if you simultaneously depended on those very neighboors and the region as a whole for oil to maintain your transportational infrastructure...well, you'd want to quit using gas too.

In Israel, it's a geopolitical, decision; you could even argue that it's a military strategy.

Denmark is different. Here it's because our partially-government owned monopoly-posessing power company is investing in it =]

Somebody has to build the charing stations, and there's a distinct economic interest for our company to do so - see, because they have a near-monopoly, they charge a lot of dough for green energy from us and pay relatively little to anybody farming it.

However, they only get a good profit margin on their investment if they're able to sell it here - if they export it to other power markets in other countries, they lose any and all value the "green" energy had. Naturally, since Vestas is a danish company and the market leader in windmill manufacture and technology, and their home market is important, we have a lot of steady incomming green energy from windmills.

So, rather than export the green energy, if they build charging stations with lithium ion batteries, they gain a large power-storage infrastructure. So whenever we produce surplus green, or surplus energy in general, it goes into the charging stations, and can then be sold to the car owners at a nice fat premium over what they could get from exports.

Also, Denmark has an amazing market potential because:
- The longest imaginable drive within this country would requirre you to switch batteries no more than 3 times going back and forth
- GPS is insanely accurate here, making it easy to locate charging stations
- Huge car taxes - more than 50% of a cars price here is a straight-up tax. However, it is very likely that electric cars will not have this huge tax. Theres a general political movement towards green taxes, and that would place electric cars at a price-vise advantage, leading directly to higher profits for Renault.
- Denmark is a long thin peninsula and a group of islands, and is therefore incredibly humid, and we have snowy, salty, wet winters - and an electric car design would requirre far fewer moving parts, allowing for a much better encapsulated hull construction because mechanics don't have to mess around with it all the time. This directly prevents corrosion, and therefore improves longevity _a lot_.
- We're used to paying a lot of money for tiny cars with little horsepower more so than any other country in the world. It'll be an easier sell here than anywhere else.

...the sad thing is that Denmark is actually drilling up about as much oil as it's consuming, and the danish commercial trading fleet is using more oil than our cars...so this switch counts for nought in the big picture because we're dirty in our very own peculiar ways, and it'll only serve to make us just about as bad as the americans per capita.

[BlakNinja @ May 13th 2008 9:52AM]

Shai is from Israel..

[Che @ May 12th 2008 10:45AM]

Automated battery exchange stations could allow a battery swap to be faster than a fill-up and could be total game changers for electric cars, making the range almost a non-isssue. The problem is a chicken and egg issue. No stations without the cars, no cars without the stations. That's why it makes sense to introduce cars with exchangeable batteries in a small country. For a modest capital investment you could put exchange stations into gas stations on all the major roads. You'd need massive government involvement to get anything like that off the ground in the US. Nobody will build thousands of stations in the hopes that cars with compatible exchangeable batteries will come along.

[thedesolate1 @ May 12th 2008 5:32PM]

well this is certainly a step in the right direction as far as designs go. At least it doesnt look like an abomination of god like the rest of the green cars being created. I wonder when some1 will take a pointer or 2 from the tesla roadster?

[sheikhness @ May 13th 2008 9:03AM]

It's late gen Renault Megane sedan, fairly common car in Europe and Israel.

I'd say that Israel is doing it for green/economical reasons more than for political agenda. It buys oil from OPEC like almost everyone else, so it is no more or less dependant on Arab oil than the rest of the world.
Additionally, this project makes sense in such a small country where the population is by and large concentrated in the center - easier to deploy infrastructure and commute distances are fairly small, I would guess that the daily average is about 60km.