Where Shadows Fester

Chevrolet Volt

Toyota Prius

We looked at a few conventional cars but then decided to go electric. Tel Aviv is one of the greenest cities in the world and Israel is supposed to be at the top of the environmental food chain. At least that is what they keep telling us. There are charging stations all over the place, tax reductions for those who go electric and even free parking spaces for electric vehicles in some places. Free parking is a wondrous thing.

I see the Toyota Prius driving around town every day. But I was not at all impressed with their hybrid technology. It is like the worst of both worlds. You get the high fuel costs of internal combustion combined with the slow speed and short range of an electric vehicle. I also did not care for the way it felt when the car switched between the two.

The Chevrolet Volt is essentially the same except that it is far more expensive. Probably because it is built in the United States. The Prius is built in Japan and China.



Renault Fluence

Then we looked at the Renault Fluence. It is fully electric, reasonably priced and has an amusing history. Renault originally partnered with Better Place to develop the car and put automated battery stations all over Israel. Their goal was to have as many electric cars as internal combustion on the road by 2016. Instead, they went bankrupt.

That pretty much killed sales but it does not bother me at all. The Better Place system was too authoritarian. They owned the batteries, without which the car does you very little good. They had a complicated leasing system and series of payment plans based on how much you drove, where you drove, what time of day you drove. It was like the early days of mobile phones when companies charged everybody for every little thing.

Now that Better Place is all but dead, Renault has taken over the batteries. It simply comes with the car as it should. Where and how I drive has nothing to do with the company that sold me the car.

You were only allowed to charge your battery at home or at Better Place stations under the Better Place plan. Now you can charge it anywhere. My building put in charging stations two or three years ago which I can now use. Rather than paying Better Place fees to charge my batteries I can charge them at home for free since the stations at my building are solar powered. I went from pay far more for petrol than any American ever has to paying absolutely nothing to fuel my car. Assuming I only charge it at home.

Even if I charge it at a charging station I have to pay for, the prices are a tiny fraction of what it costs to fill a conventional tank.

The only aspect of the Better Place system I would like to see are the automated battery switching stations. The Renault Fluence battery can be quickly removed and replaced and Better Place built a few automated stations where you could replace a dying battery for a new one in about a minute. The stations still exist but nobody really knows what will happen to them now that their company is no more. I can still charge my batteries and/or replace them but not automatically within a minute. Charging from almost empty to full takes about eight hours and replacing them myself takes a good ten minutes. In our instant society, ten minutes is an eternity.