« Slowing down the internet saves energy? | Main | T. Boone Pickens is putting his money where his mouth is »
Project Better Place shows off electric car bound for Israel
By MB-BigB | May 12, 2008
The joint venture between the Silicon Valley startup Project Better Place and Renault-Nissan, showed off its prototype all electric Renault sedan in Tel Aviv on Saturday. The project, which has the endorsement of Israel’s government, hopes to have Israel become the first country in the world to have large numbers of electric cars. Kickoff is planned for 2010.
The project has a business model similar to cell phones – car owners will pay a monthly subscription fee for the batteries, and will be able to recharge their batteries either at home or the office or at recharging grid stations scheduled to be built across Israel beginning in 2009.
While the car currently has a limited range, the project backers say that it is ideally suited to a smaller country like Israel – daily commutes and distances between most places in Israel make the car’s range not an issue. For longer drives, owners will be able to swap out the battery at about 150 swap stations that will be built around the country. The swap will take about the same time as it takes to fill up your gas tank. Otherwise, car owners will just be able to charge their batteries at home, at the office, or at charging stations.
Related posts:
- More on the Project Better Place – Wired’s interview and story on Shai Agassi
- Hawaii signs on to Better Place Project
- Seeking Alpha – Oil Prices, Electric Cars and the Wisdom of Carlos Ghosn
- Upcoming distributed computing project – The Clean Energy Project
- Nissan adding all electric Leaf to its lineup in 2010
Like this post? Subscribe in a reader
.
Topics: hybrid and electric cars | 1 Comment »
One Response to “Project Better Place shows off electric car bound for Israel”
Comments
March 8th, 2009 at 9:08 pm
[...] Shai Agassi’s Better Place project, has been one ofthe companies talking with the governor. The company says that they would build charging stations in Seattle, Portland, San Francisco and Los Angeles, and they athey would supply their battery switch-out stations at rest areas about every 40 miles along the highway. [...]