"Better Place" Israel tour and test drive

Better Place Trip Report:

Our small team of four took a break to visit the “Better Place†Electric Car Demonstration center Better Place Israel, (Hebrew) . Google translates it I cannot find a link to the English page.

The center is located symbolically in an old oil depot. The actual building is a converted water tank. The center is very slick and modern. English and Hebrew information and tours are available. This may be the only place in the world where you can actually test drive a prototype PEV. The center has some Hebrew only kiosks with computer presentations. All visitors must get a badge and present a drivers license if they wish to test drive. Everything is free.

The prototypes are converted Renault Megane and Laguna conventional cars so the drive train, performance, and instrumentation are crude approximations. I was told that the transmissions had been fused and that there was no regeneration available during breaking.

The tour starts with a small briefing, then a video presentation which closes with a cutout of the first production car model. After the presentation it is out to the test track where 3 guests and one tour guide enter the cars and take a sort drive on a closed track with a small straight segment, a 270 and a return to a small driver exchange lot, so each of the three guests take turns driving.

The instrumentation, controls and parking brake were all prototypes and the gear selection buttons looked like something from a 1980’s radio. It is hard to say what the test drive really indicates about the production car which will be manufactured in Turkey. The prototype had a lot of vibration in the wheel, most of which seemed to come from the A/C ( I turned it off and most but not all of the vibration went away). Even with the A/C off and the car standing still it didn’t have the dead quite of a Prius. Since the car does not have the production braking system nothing could be learned from the brakes. As for throttle control it had a very strong braking effect if you let off 100%. I don’t know if the production model will depart so radically from what normal drives expect but I can see some potential in a throttle pedal that lets you get into more regeneration and deceleration than the Prius, but serious usability studies would be needed to tell for sure.

After the test drive it is off to an air conditioned tent with big open doors (how environmentally friendly is that in a desert?) to see a demo of the battery exchange. The batter exchange is a robotic process that allows drivers to extend the range by "filling up" in 90 seconds by swapping the battery. What can I say about the demo. The car was stationary so positioning was not demonstrated. The old battery came down the new one went up, and that was that. The car didn't move so who knows how it will work in real life. I think lifting and bolting on a battery will be the easy part. The real challenge is no backup motive force in the car so any sensible driver will have to change well before the 100 mile limit and probably have to deviate significantly from the desired route to do it.


As for the pitch it was not very full of details or facts. It appealed to the green emotion but also pandered to the preservation of the current energy hungry lifestyles.

I can certainly see why they are starting in Israel. This is a country that can accomplish the type of comprehensive infrastructure changes a car like this requires. It is also a small country and very urbanized a good application for the car. Many Israelis lease their cars through their employer as a kind of benefit, so there is a strong culture here ready for the "subscription" model Better Place proposes. Finally the car carries with it the promise of oil independence and Israel would much rather burn coal than buy oil.

As for the environment, I don’t think this or any electric car is going to make a big impact on the environment, they just shift the location of the pollution from the car to the power plant. Maybe it is a start though, maybe it will be easier to clean up 100 power plants than 1M cars.

Better Place Visitor Center
Pi Glilot compound Ramat Hasharon Tel Aviv, Israel
Phone: 073-7777222
Better Place Visitors Center - Google Maps

 

They are saying 2011. At this time there were no pricing details, not very clear description of how the product will be sold. It appears that they are almost going for the cell phone model with some sort of service level agreement, maybe millage charges. For a solid estimate I would have to see the state of retooling and the supply pipeline for manufacturing to see what they could possibly hope to deliver.

You will have an rfid id card for the charging stations that at a minimum makes sure nobody steals your charging cord and may do other things with your account.

You will get two charging stations installed free, presumable one at your home and one at your office presumably for each "contract" you sign. With the battery exchange you don't own the battery, who knows if you will actually ever own the car. Actually I wouldn't see much of an advantage in owning such an early entry in a technology, if not a standard that may not last long enough to justify the capital outlay.


I have no idea if the schedule is reasonable but I would have been much more convinced if the prototype would have been a little more polished.

 

The web page is thin and actually so was the presentation. The audience was really involved though and had lots of questions especially after the test drive and after the battery change there were lots of questions.

You would think there is some real substance behind it because just the demo operation looks quite expensive, just the electric bill for that air conditions tent must be big

But who knows after seeing the total fraud that was AIG and after seening the total fraud that was the bail out of AIG, I'm not sure if any of these "captains of Industry" are any more capable of doing anything productive then the politicians they buy, I mean we elect

 

The cars looked like 2009 models. The dash were normal dials. The tack was a +- current flow. The fuel gauge represented charge. On the console were buttons silver, flat, out of place, and the parking break was a strange large "switch" which you pulled and pushed.