Israel is embracing the electric car on a wide scale

probe

Article from International Herald Tribune,
(22.1.08 - European print edition)

On Monday, the Israeli government announced its support for a broad effort to promote the use of electric cars, embracing a joint venture between an American-Israeli entrepreneur and Renault, of France, and its partner, Nissan Motor, of Japan.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, with the active support of President Shimon Peres, intends to make Israel a laboratory to test the practicality of an environmentally clean electric car.

The state will offer tax incentives to purchasers, and the new company, with a $200 million investment to start, will begin construction of facilities to recharge the cars and replace empty batteries quickly.

The idea, said Shai Agassi, 39, the software entrepreneur behind the new company, is to sell electric car transportation on the model of the cellphone. Purchasers get subsidized hardware - the car - and pay a monthly fee for expected mileage, like minutes on a cellphone plan, eliminating concerns about the fluctuating price of gasoline.

Agassi and his investors are convinced that the cost of running such a car will be significantly less than a model using gasoline, which in Jerusalem is about $1.65 per liter, or $6.25 per gallon. "With $100 a barrel oil, we've crossed a historic threshold where electricity and batteries provide a cheaper alternative for consumers," Agassi said. "You buy a car to go an infinite distance, and we need to create the same feeling for an electric car - that you can fill it up when you stop or sleep and go an infinite distance."

Agassi's company, Project Better Place of Palo Alto, California, will provide the lithium-ion batteries, which will be able to go about 200 kilometers, or 125 miles, per charge, and the infrastructure necessary to keep the cars going - whether plug-in posts on city streets or service stations along highways, where in a structure like a car wash, exhausted batteries will be removed and fresh ones inserted.

Renault and Nissan will provide the cars. The chairman of both companies, Carlos Ghosn, attended the announcements on Monday.

Other companies are developing electric cars, like the Tesla Roadster and the Chevrolet Volt, but the project here is a major step for Renault, which clearly believes that there is a commercial future in electric cars.

Israel, where the round-trip commute between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem is only about 120 kilometers, is considered a good place to test the idea, which Agassi, Renault and Nissan hope to copy in small countries like Denmark and crowded cities like London, Paris, Singapore and New York. London, which has a congestion area tax for cars, lets electric cars enter downtown and park free.

Project Better Place's major investor, Idan Ofer, 52, has put up $100 million for the project and is its board chairman. He will remain chairman of Israel Corp., a major owner and operator of shipping companies and refineries.

"What's driving me is a much wider outlook than Israel," Ofer said. "If it were just Israel, I'd be cannibalizing my refinery business. I'm not so concerned about the refineries, but building a world-class company. If Israel will ever produce a Nokia, it will be this."

Ofer has his eye on China, with its increasing car penetration, oil consumption and environmental pollution, where he has interest from a Chinese car company, Chery, for a similar joint venture. Renault will offer a small number of electric models of existing vehicles, like the Megane sedan, at prices roughly comparable to gasoline models. The batteries will come from Agassi.

The tax breaks for "clean" electric vehicles, which Israel promises to keep until at least 2015, will make the cars less expensive to consumers than gasoline-engine cars. "You'll be able to get a nice, high-end car at a price roughly half that of the gasoline model today," Agassi said.

He contends that operating expenses will be half of those for gasoline-driven vehicles, especially in Europe and Israel, where gasoline taxes are high. The company, and its customers, will normally recharge their batteries at night, when the electricity is least expensive, and they expect the batteries to have a life of 7,000 charges, though Agassi says he is counting on only 1,500 charges, which is roughly 150,000 miles, the life of the average car.

"Because the price of gasoline fluctuates so much during the life of a car, it's hard to predict the cost basis for driving," Agassi said. "But electricity fluctuates less, and you can buy it in advance, so I can give you a guaranteed price per mile, cheaper than the price of gas today."

Agassi predicts that a few thousand electric cars will be on Israeli roads in 2009 and 100,000 by the end of 2010; Israel has two million cars on the road, and about 10 percent are replaced each year.

Agassi suggested this model for the electric car - concentrating on infrastructure rather than on car production - at a 2006 meeting of the Saban Forum of the Brookings Institution, which Peres attended. He was enthralled by the idea.

Peres is a strong believer in Israel's mission to better the world, he says, and not simply sell arms to it.

Peres, who knew Agassi's father, said during an interview that after hearing Shai Agassi speak, "I called him in and said, 'Shai, now what?' I said that now is the time for him to implement his idea, and I spoke to our prime minister and other officials and convinced them that this is a great opportunity."

Peres sees this project as part of his "green vision" for Israel, arguing that what the nation may lose in tax revenue it will save in oil. He also supports a larger investment in solar power, saying that "the Saudis don't control the sun."

"Israel can't become a major industrial country, but it can become a daring world laboratory and a pilot plant for new ideas, like the electric car," he said.

Ofer wants profits, but also thinks the project will help the environment, especially in developing countries. "China is on a very dangerous march from bicycles to cars without any notion of what they're doing to this planet in terms of air," he said. And in Mumbai, he said, "you can't even see the sky."

James Wolfensohn, the former World Bank president, is a modest investor in the project.

"Israel is a perfect test tube" for the electric car, he said. "The beauty of this is that you have a real place where you can get real human reactions. In Israel they can control the externalities and give it a chance to flourish or fail. It needs to be tested, and Agassi is to be commended for testing it and the Israeli government for trying it.'

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/01/21/business/cars.php

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AngryHippie

Israel is also embracing Palestinian land on a wide scale.
Fcuk them, and fcuk their electric cars

parsi

Hmm. They could save a wee bit of power by producing and using less munitions.

Also irrigation has to be a considerable load on scarce resources.

oscarBravo

AngryHippie: don't go there.

AngryHippie

My bad, They seem to want rid of Gaza now anyway. Fair play to them for trying to go electric.

blackbox

I can understand them wanting to move away from oil dependancy. It appears to be more of an economic initiative than an environmental one (and nothing wrong with that!) Does anyone know how they generate their electricity?

probe

blackbox wrote: »

I can understand them wanting to move away from oil dependancy. It appears to be more of an economic initiative than an environmental one (and nothing wrong with that!) Does anyone know how they generate their electricity?

ELECTRICITY

According to the IEC (Israel's monopoly national utility), Israel had about 8.6 gigawatts (GW) of installed electric generating capacity (at 29 power stations, including 6 major thermal plants) as of 1999, with 70% accounted for by coal-fired plants, 25% by fuel oil-fired units, and the remainder by gasoil and independent power producers (IPPs). Israel also is a world leader in solar technology and relies heavily on solar energy for water heating. Israel's power demand is increasing rapidly (approximately doubling every 10 years), and the IEC estimates that growing power demand will require an increase in production capacity to over 10 GW by 2002. By 2010, IEC foresees installed generating capacity reaching 14.3 GW. To meet this increased demand, IEC is aiming to raise $1.2-$1.3 billion a year in financing for generation, transmission, and distribution systems. The IEC is converting its oil and diesel-fired generators to gas, and hopes to generate 25% of its electricity from gas by 2005. The source of the gas most likely will be either via pipeline from Egypt or from Israel's own offshore gas reserves.

Israel's fourth coal plant, an 1,100-megawatt facility at the Mediterranean Sea port of Ashkelon, was inaugurated on June 29, 2000, and was the first power plant in Israel to have sophisticated anti-pollution scrubbers (Israel intends to install scrubbers at its two coal-fired plants in Hadera as well). Israel also is considering construction of a fifth coal-fired plant, but as of late 2000 a decision had not been made by the Infrastructure Ministry, which also is considering natural gas. If approved, the plant could go into service in 2006. Meanwhile, construction has started on a coal unloading pier at Ashkelon to handle 200,000-metric-ton vessels. This should lead to savings of $13 million per year in transport costs. Currently, coal is shipped to another port, Ashdod, unloaded, and sent by rail to Ashkelon. The IEC transmission grid is a closed loop system connecting power stations to major load centers throughout Israel and to the Palestinian Authority. The grid covers 1,645 miles.

Besides coal and oil, future sources of electric generating capacity may include natural gas supplies, from Egypt and/or from gas recently discovered offshore Israel and Gaza (see above). Natural gas would serve at least three goals: increased diversity in energy sources; benefits to the environment; and reductions in IEC's electric generation costs. As of mid-2000, IEC reportedly was studying proposals from four groups (EMG, Yam Thetis, BG International, and Sdot Yam) for the supply of 250 million cubic feet per day (mmcf/d) to its power plants. Israel also is looking at other indigenous options, including oil shale from Nahal Zin in the Dead Sea region and renewables (particularly solar power).

At the present time, nuclear power is not considered an option for at least 20 years (although Israel already operates a nuclear reactor at Dimona, in the Negev Desert 25 miles west of the Jordanian border, as well as a smaller research reactor at Nahal Sorek south of Tel Aviv).

As part of an effort to increase privatization of the country's power sector, Israel's Ministry of Energy has directed IEC to purchase at least 900 MW of power from IPPs by the year 2005 (of which possibly 150 MW are expected to come from solar and wind facilities, with the rest mainly natural gas-fueled). Israel's goal is for 10% of all electricity to be produced by IPPs. In June 1997, IEC announced the first tender for a large-scale private power plant in Israel -- a 370 megawatt, dual-fired, combined-cycle plant to be built at Ramat Hovav (by a consortium of PSEG Global and the Ofer Group) in the Negev Desert by 2002. In July 1998, the first IPP tender issued by the IEC was awarded. A second and third IPP are possible, including the 400-MW, gas-fired Alon Tavor power plant in northern Israel.
One area of potential regional cooperation involves integration of individual national power transmission grids into a regional power network. Such a network would, among other benefits, allow power companies to take advantage of differences in peak demand periods, reduce the need for (and the costs associated with) installation and maintenance of reserve generating capacity, and provide outlets for surplus generating capacity (mainly from Israel to Jordan). Israel and Jordan held talks in October 1999 regarding possible cooperation on a shale-oil-fired plant as stipulated in the two countries' peace treaty. The two countries also have talked about linking their power grids and have discussed several proposed joint power stations, including a $1-billion, 1,000-MW plant to be located on the two countries' border, a 100-MW wind farm, a 150-MW solar thermal plant in the southern Arava desert near Eilat, and an 800-MW plant in Jordan that would supply power to Israel. In addition, IEC has developed plans for potential joint wind power development with Syria in the Golan Heights region should a peace treaty be signed. IEC estimates that up to 10% of future electric supplies could come from outside the country.

IEC plans to spend about $1 billion over the next ten years to help reduce emissions from its power plants. New coal plants are to be equipped with flue gas desulphurization and combustion systems, and most of IEC's existing gas turbines have been retrofitted with low nitrogen combustion systems. Most of the coal ash waste produced by IEC's three coal-fired power plants is sold to the cement industry.

In July 2000, Israel experienced a heat wave which drove electric power demand to record high levels, and strained the country's generating capacity. IEC called for speeding up construction of private power plants (the first major private plant currently is not scheduled to begin operations until 2004).

Sources for this report include: AP Worldstream; Agence France Presse; BBC Summary of World Broadcasts; CIA World Factbook 2000; Coal Week International; Dow Jones News Wire service; Economist Intelligence Unit ViewsWire; Financial Times; Global Power Report; Hart's Africa Oil and Gas; International Herald Tribune; Jerusalem Post; Middle East Economic Digest; New York Times; Oil and Gas Journal; Petroleum Intelligence Weekly; PR Newswire; U.S. Energy Information Administration; WEFA Middle East Economic Outlook.


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https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Environment/energy.html

blackbox

Thanks Probe for the comprehensive response.

probe

blackbox wrote: »

Thanks Probe for the comprehensive response.

It is a slightly dated copy and paste, but the general setup has hardly changed over the past 2 years, one suspects.

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probe

AngryHippie wrote: »

Israel is also embracing Palestinian land on a wide scale.
Fcuk them, and fcuk their electric cars

The purpose of probe launching into this thread was not some pro-Israeli propaganda exercise by probe.

One was simply highlighting what one government was doing to support the move to electric cars by some entrepreneurial interests.

I have no doubt but that when a significant number of CO2 car-a-holic piston-heads get behind the wheel of an electric vehicle of similar spec to the 3+ litre guzzlers they are driving at present, and see how the electric vehicles perform, they will be won over. I have no doubt too that once everyday commuters get their hands on electric cars and watch their fuel bills drop, and how easy they are to drive, they will be sold on them too.

We do however need the "re-fuelling" infrastructure to be in place to maximise electric vehicle penetration - and this is what this Israeli news item reports on.

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