Israeli electric car program

The Middle East is a region inextricably associated with oil production, but one country in the region is turning its back on fossil fuels.

That country is Israel, which has some political justification for reducing any dependency on neighbouring OPEC countries to keep its vehicle parc on the road.

As recently as August of last year, the country's government announced it was looking at the feasibility of powering its electricity grid with commercial nuclear power stations.

This facility would potentially provide Israel with power generation capacity sufficient to support the country's entire vehicle fleet converting to full electric power. That may sound like pie-in-the-sky, but the Israelis are fully on board with the idea and have invited companies to develop an electric car regime for the country.

As the Israeli government is anxious to reduce CO2 emissions and particle pollution generated by the country's cars, it has launched this new initiative to replace the nation's vehicle fleet with electric-powered cars at the earliest juncture.

Renault-Nissan and Californian firm, Project Better Place, have signed a memorandum of understanding in Jerusalem to start work on a scheme to supply electrically powered vehicles (Renault-Nissan) and the electric recharge infrastructure (Project Better Place), commencing from 2011.

Renault-Nissan anticipates that the electric vehicles to be sold into the market will offer performance similar to that of a current 1.6-litre petrol-engined car. Power will be stored in lithium-ion batteries and replenished from stations established around the country by Project Better Place.

The business model is said to be based on the mobile phone paradigm, except that users will subscribe to a power supply program and the batteries for the vehicles rented, rather than purchased with the car.

Zero emissions vehicles earn their owners a tax break from the Israeli government, so Renault-Nissan expects the total cost of ownership to be considerably lower than for a typical vehicle with an internal combustion engine.

Over at Project Better Place, the plan is to establish 50,000 recharging stations throughout Israel. 

Renault-Nissan and NEC have developed a suitable lithium-ion battery pack and will put this into production. Testing for the entire system is due to commence this year.

Government statistics show that 90 per cent of Israeli car owners drive fewer than 70km per day, making electric cars a viable alternative for the vast majority of car owners.

Renault-Nissan has described Israel as the "perfect market" for this sort of large scale test, potentially bigger than the hydrogen fuel exercise recently implemented by the Norwegian government (more here).

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