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Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Transportation Not Capitalism but the State Is the Solution

Posted by Charles Mudede on Tue, Feb 26, 2013 at 2:21 PM

In a sign of serious trouble, electric car services company Better Place is winding down its operations in Silicon Valley and Australia.

The company will focus on Israel and Denmark, where the company’s electric vehicle charging and battery-swapping infrastructure is already in place, Better Place says in a statement.

Israeli software executive Shai Agassi founded Better Place in 2005 to tackle one of the main problems with battery-electric vehicles—the limited driving range. From its base in Palo Alto, Calif., the company developed a business model where customers buy monthly driving plans that cover the cost of charging at home and at public stations. Customers can also drive up to automated battery-changing stations that remove depleted batteries for fresh ones in about the same amount of time it takes to fill a tank of gas.

As you can see, this problem—developing an infrastructure for a new medium for a mode of transportation—is too huge for the market, its resources, and its very nature. The sheer scale of this kind of transformation can only be supported by an institution or social form that has a completely different set of priorities. The formation and maintenance of an electric car infrastructure needs something like an industrial policy, an approach to economic development that neoliberal theorists totally reject. But, as the economist Ha-Joon Chang has pointed out, if the Japanese state had not absorbed huge losses in the long and expensive development of its automobile industry, it would not have a Toyota to talk about. It is the business of the state to fund and sustain an infrastructure for electric cars. If the state is not there all the time, then we are just dreaming.

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Comments (7) RSS

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Don't really see why this is a problem.

For the Oscar Night Party, carpooled with some friends in their Chevy Volt over to Redmond. Charged up while at the party.

Never used the gas engine, except to heat the car. Total mpg around 60.

Posted by Will in Seattle

on February 26, 2013 at 2:57 PM

I don't know about being "the solution" but the role of the state is a truth worth repeating again, and again, ..

Posted by anon1256 on February 26, 2013 at 3:11 PM

Each time I see this charging station I wonder how much energy they're using to run the ridiculous and unnecessarily large screen continuously.

Posted by Dod on February 26, 2013 at 8:33 PM

Oh God. This is the absolute worst possible example you could have used to make your point, Charles. Battery swapping is a pointless, unneeded technology that is extremely expensive to enact, requires costly engineering that no one wants, and that, in an age of improving battery efficiency and supercharging, is already technically obsolete. In 20 years these swapping stations will be albatrosses, signs of a bad government bet. That Agassi, a slick, superficial salesman who has since been ousted from Better Place, managed to use his family connections and charisma to keep this con job running is a testament to the wooly-headed thinking that can happen when non-expert politicians drive technical policy. They are pulling out of the US and Australia because it's dawned on even these gullible lawmakers that this was a bad idea sold well, not a new disruptive technology. Agassi might have well ended his pitch with "Monorail!!!". You just made the best possible case against what you were saying, which is sad since I think you are right in many other much more solid cases. Do you homework next time and talk to people who actually know about the challenge of implementing the widespread use of electric cars. They were on to Better Place years ago.

Posted by Sa-Spence on February 26, 2013 at 9:42 PM

Chuckie, but you dipshits hate cars. Get your propaganda straight, would you?

Posted by Unbrainwashed on February 26, 2013 at 11:26 PM

@4, i should have made my position clear: at the start of any new technology there are lots of ideas, some are better than others. but at the moment, we only have the market trying to sort that out and not the state. also, there are often good unexpected consequences that arise from bad projects. my argument still holds, implementation of the infrastructure is the business of the state.

Posted by Charles Mudede on February 27, 2013 at 11:29 AM

Again: Chuckie, but you dipshits hate cars. Get your propaganda straight, will you? Oh, and try answering the fucking questions. Oh, and don't get cute with the e.e. cummings stuff. Use the punctuation you were taught in fifth grade.

Posted by Unbrainwashed on February 27, 2013 at 11:47 AM