RIP Better Place

While I'm conducting funeral services, I've been lax in noting the demise of electric car company Better Place, which has gone out of business - Better Place's Failure Is Blow to Renault. Tesla motors appears to be adopting some of their business model - Building an EV Ecosystem: Why Tesla Will Likely Succeed Where Better Place Failed.

The financial collapse of electric-car venture Better Place Ltd., which filed for liquidation over the weekend, is a blow for French automotive group Renault SA, RNO.FR +2.37% which helped the Israeli company develop its novel battery-switching system for electric cars.

Founded by Israeli entrepreneur Shai Agassi in 2007, Better Place developed a system where electric-car owners could drive their vehicles into a network of stations around Israel ILCO.TV +0.05% and replace the car's battery with a new one in about the same amount of time it takes to fill a gasoline tank on a regular car.

The "quick drop" system was supposed to remove one of the main obstacles to the adoption of electric vehicles, namely the several hours it takes to recharge a flat battery.

Renault CEO Carlos Ghosn had championed Better Place's technology as one of the pillars of the French auto maker's ambitious €4 billion ($5.17 billion) electric-vehicle strategy. The first cars equipped with Better Place technology were Renault Fluence Z.E. sedans.

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A Chat With Elon Musk

PandoMonthly has an interesting interview with Elon Musk, one of the few unarguable cleantech success stories over the past decade - Fireside Chat With Elon Musk

Sarah Lacy talked to Elon Musk of Tesla Motors and SpaceX during PandoMonthly and went into detail on what other entreprenuers should do while raising venture capital, why he isn't going to be doing another Internet startup, his thoughts on CleanTech, the launch of SpaceX, and finally, his plans for the future.

On a related note, Technology Review reports that Tesla Automotive is now profitable - Even Without Accounting Gimmicks, Electric-Car Maker Tesla is Now Profitable.

As expected, Tesla Motors, the maker of the luxury Model S electric sedan, announced today that it was profitable for the first time in its ten-year history. During the first quarter of 2013 it had profits of $11 million. Total revenues were $562 million.

The profits came as Tesla cut costs and managed to sell more cars as it ramped up production at its factory in California. According to reports, Tesla’s Model S outsold electric vehicles from both GM and Nissan in the first quarter.

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