Quick Take: Much hyped Better Place has turned out to be a worse place at the end of the day. After sucking in more than three-quarters of a billion dollars in venture funding, the firm is retreating to Israel and Denmark in a last-ditch effort to survive.

The firm is the latest reminder that venture investors are not necessarily any smarter than the rest of us. Better Place was founded on an idea that was dead stupid – namely, to swap out electric car batteries at service stations to give EVs a more extended range. As you might expect, it was virtually impossible to get major automakers to agree to standardize on a battery size and location, so Better Place's automated stations work only in countries where standards have been mandated.

Read the story below. But don't take this failure as the death knell for all electric vehicles. Cars such as the Tesla Model S and the Chevy Volt suggest that EVs will gradually improve in capability and grow in popularity. - Jesse Berst

Better Place's recent history seems to have set the stage for the U.S. and Australia cutbacks. CEO Shai Agassi was replaced in October 2012 and his successor stayed at the helm for only a few months.

Under Agassi, the company had raised about $800 million but was losing money faster than revenues were replacing it before and at the time of his departure, according to an earlier Smart Grid News report. That and only one car maker, Renault, has agreed to build cars that are compatible with Better Place battery swapping stations.

As reported in MIT Technology Review, the reason for the cutbacks and move to focus on Israel and Denmark is that those countries already have EV charging and battery swapping infrastructure in operation.

Current Better Place CEO Dan Cohen said the company has successfully demonstrated its business model but has had to make some tough decisions: "We have demonstrated that Better Place works as a concept. We need to prove to our customers, suppliers and investors that we have a sustainable, scalable model. To do so we are now focusing on realizing the full potential of what we have built, and that means concentrating our resources and energy in the near term, on Denmark and Israel, where we have customers on the road enjoying our switching and charging networks. At the same time, we had to make some difficult decisions on actions to be taken elsewhere in the world."

The company started projects in Israel, the San Francisco Bay Area, Hawaii, Australia, Japan and China, but it seems too early to tell if its monthly driving plans and automated battery swapping stations will eventually catch on.