{"id":5595,"date":"2021-01-10T00:51:42","date_gmt":"2021-01-10T00:51:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/archive.abuelsamid.com\/?p=5595"},"modified":"2021-01-10T18:26:10","modified_gmt":"2021-01-10T18:26:10","slug":"better-place-founder-agassi-volt-will-be-a-niche-product","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.abuelsamid.com\/?p=5595","title":{"rendered":"Better Place founder Agassi: Volt will be a “niche product”"},"content":{"rendered":"

By now many of us around these parts know who Shai Agassi is and what he wants to do. He wants to build a distribution infrastructure of swappable batteries to be used in electric cars<\/a> with the ultimate goal of making EVs<\/a> mainstream. The problem is that electric cars remain an expensive proposition. Even with Agassi's approach that would sell the EV without a battery and add on a subscription model for the battery, the up-front cost will remain higher than conventional cars. Nonetheless, in Paris last week Agassi was telling the Wall Street Journal that he doesn't think the Chevy Volt<\/a> would ever be more than a niche product. He bases that on price of the car, expected to be around $40,000 before any tax incentives.<\/p>\n

Agassi thinks that is too high for what would otherwise be a $20,000 vehicle, like the Chevy Cruze<\/a> on which it's based. As far as he goes, he's right, but he doesn't go far enough. GM<\/a> and everyone else know that any car that will be mainstream has to have an affordable up-front cost. That's why GM originally wanted a $30,000 price point for the Volt. That's why they went with a smaller battery and range extender. The realities of the battery situation will continue to make longer range electric driving unaffordable for the foreseeable future from a purchase standpoint regardless of whether you take the GM or Better Place approach.<\/p>\n

While Agassi's subscription-based software background may make sense for large deep pocketed corporations, for regular people the cost of entry is a much bigger hurdle than the total cost of ownership<\/a>. If you can't pay the door charge, it doesn't matter if the drinks are free once you get inside. That's why so many people relied on cheap lease deals<\/a> and nothing down mortgages over the last decade. The current reality of what is happening in the financial markets means that there is a high probability that none of these approaches will prove to be viable anytime soon. Unless a manufacturer can find a way to get that entry cost down and soon, all EVs will likely remain niche products for many more years.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n

https:\/\/www.autoblog.com\/2008\/10\/09\/better-place-founder-agassi-volt-will-be-a-niche-product\/<\/p>\n

2008-10-09T10:24:00+00:00<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By now many of us around these parts know who Shai Agassi is and what he wants to do. He wants to build a distribution infrastructure of swappable batteries to be used in electric cars with the ultimate goal of making EVs mainstream. The problem is\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-autoblog"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.abuelsamid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5595","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.abuelsamid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.abuelsamid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.abuelsamid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.abuelsamid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5595"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.abuelsamid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5595\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9806,"href":"https:\/\/archive.abuelsamid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5595\/revisions\/9806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.abuelsamid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.abuelsamid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.abuelsamid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}