Better Place boss exits after just three months

Electric vehicle charging infrastructure specialist Better Place is in consternation following the departure of its newly promoted CEO, Evan Thornley.

The company is putting on a brave public face, describing the events of recent days as a continuation of its “transition from a development company into a commercially focused organisation.”

Under Mr Thornley’s stewardship, “the company was able to raise the capital it needed to sustain continued operations, and underwent a significant restructuring to better position the organisation for long-term success,” it said in a statement.

A former IT entrepreneur and Victorian ALP upper house MP, Mr Thornley was promoted from Australian CEO to global CEO in October 2012.

He’s been let go after what he described in an email obtained by The Financial Times as “strong and honestly-held differences [that] have emerged at the most senior levels of the company about how we best take the company forward”.

“I do not wish to be a barrier to that unity and so will step down and let the company transition to new leadership,” he concluded.

News site Crikey, in breaking the news, says the company’s local operation hangs in the balance with the imperative of global rationalisation looming.

Better Place has recorded more than $US490 million in losses since launching in 2007, including $US64 million in the last quarter and $US132 million last financial year. The financial haemorrhage was a major determinant in the decision to call in Mr Thornley to replace founding CEO Shai Agassi.

While the company has described the Australian arm as “important front and an attractive market”, its global communications office has issued a statement saying activities Down Under will be suspended to pour more of its resources into its home market of Israel and its most advanced away market in Denmark.

“From the global perspective, the Better Place strategy has not changed and expanding globally remains the plan,” Global Communications Director Susanne Tolstrup said in a statement. “There has been a recent shift to focus on the markets where networks are deployed and cars are on the road, currently Denmark and Israel.

“This requires focused resource allocation and management attention which will result in slowing down pace in other markets for a while. Australia is an important front and an attractive market, which Better Place plans to cultivate as soon as we are ready.”

With EV sales sluggish around the world, Better Place’s local cause hasn’t been helped by the Australian market’s sustained resistance to the technology.

Australia has no more than a couple of hundred battery-electric cars on the road, with 125 Mitsubishi i-MiEVs and 96 Nissan LEAFs sold throughout 2011-2012. Neither maker avails itself of Better Place’s primary commercial differentiator, its battery swap technology. Neither does Holden with its newly arrived Volt PHEV.

Reflecting the classic chicken-and-egg dilemma known for hindering the growth of new technologies, the first vehicle set up for battery swapping, Renault’s Fluence ZE, has had its local launch suspended, thanks in large part to a lack of recharging infrastructure.

Better Place’s first trial network - announced in 2011 in cahoots with joint-venture partners ActewAGL, Rock Development Group and the ACT government - has achieved little.

This can hardly be good news for other contributors in the company’s local $25 million fundraising efforts in 2009, including Lend Lease Ventures, RACV and a number of individual “angel” investors.

The company was a major player in the initially promising EV Engineering consortium. Partly a bid to sell the virtues of the battery-swap system, EV Engineering produced an electric Commodore that went nowhere following flat rejection of the technology by General Motors in Detroit.

Asked about the local operation’s future, spokeswoman Felicity Glennie-Holmes has told media it’s business as usual, with no decisions made either way.

Better Place announced Dan Cohen, deputy CEO in charge of strategy, will step up to take Mr Thornley’s place.

Mr Thornley is yet to comment publicly on his future.

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