Better Place's Electric Cars Hit the Roads

Israeli company Better Place celebrates fourth anniversary, officially inaugurates its first fleet of electrical cars.

Full article here.

By Elad Benari & Yoni Kempinski
January 23, 2012

The Israeli company Better Place on Sunday celebrated its fourth anniversary. The company marked this special occasion by officially inaugurating its first fleet of 100 electric cars. A convoy of 70 cars, driven by dozens of the company’s employees, took to the streets of Tel Aviv for their first rides.

The electric car developed by Better Place has no exhaust pipe and no gas cap, but rather a simple electric socket. It runs on a 450-lb. lithium-ion battery and can go as far as 140 miles before the battery needs to be swapped or recharged at the recharging stations. 200 such stations are expected to be available around the country in the future.

Better Place announced that the delivery process of the new cars will take place in stages and will progress as the infrastructure across the country is completed. The company expects that the deliveries to the general public will begin in the second quarter of 2012.

In 2010, Israel’s Ministry of Transportation gave Better Place a permit to import 13 Renault Fluence electric cars for testing. Israel has long been committed to electric cars, and has expressed hope that by the end of this year it will be the world’s first nation to host a national electric car network.

One of the innovations of the electric cars is that its motor is silent, eliminating the loud exhaust noises in regular cars.

“You hear a noise that lets you know the car is on,” Zohar Beit’or of Better Place told Arutz Sheva. “It’s exactly like the noise that an electric camera makes.”

“The car is so silent that you can actually speak quietly and have a nice conversation without the need to shout,” he said. “It really makes you relax.”

Beit’or noted that he was very excited about the official launch of the new cars, adding he has worked for three years on this project.

“When I started, we only had plans on PowerPoint and we shared many ideas on how this day would look,” he said. “And it’s happening now. For me, it’s a piece of history.”

The company’s Oren Kassif explained that while the Renault company makes the cars, the infrastructure is Israeli and developed by Better Place. This includes charging spots, battery swap stations, and the command and control software.

“This is the first time you can say, at a country-wide level, that you can drive an electric car anywhere in the country,” he said. “What we’ve shown today is that we can deliver the cars, we can sell them, we can have customers driving on the road anywhere they wish.”

He added, “It’s a very exciting day. For the past four years we’ve been developing the systems and the infrastructure, recruiting people and bringing in more investors and customers.”

Hard Earned Success (the Best Kosher Wines of 2011)

 Read the full article, printed in the Algemeiner.

As the Gregorian calendar came to an end, we were all blanketed by the media in all its iterations with multiple lists of the “best of” or “top 10” of any and everything under the planet from clothing and outrageous styles to restaurants and wine.  While the lists can sometimes be a little “out there” (does anyone really care about the “Top 10 Outrageous Kanye West Moments”?), they do provide a nice look back at the year that was, commemorating those which deserve to be commemorated for better or for worse.  In keeping with that tradition and in the hope of promoting those deserving wines, this newsletter contains the tasting notes for the best wines I tasted during 2011.  As the selection process this year was surprisingly difficult, I have posted on my website the runners up to this list who are just as deserving of your attention and the list can be accessed here.

As would behoove any attorney worth his salt, a few appropriate qualifiers.  Given that my day job limits the amount of time I have to dedicate to wine and my limited wallet puts a damper on the number of wines I get to taste each year, despite my best intentions I don’t taste every one of the approximately 1,500 kosher wines released every year.  Also this list is derived only from wines I tasted for the first time this year and about which I have not written about in prior years (excluding barrel tastings or tasting where the wine was clearly not yet ready to drink) with one exception that actually brings the list to 11 wines – the 1990 Katzrin I opened in honor of Daniel Rogov’s (z”l) tribute dinner in Israel a short time before he passed away.  As a result of these exclusions, there are plenty of great wines released this year that are not on this list and I’d love to hear from you which were your favorite wines this year.  Reflecting the international nature of this newsletter’s readership, a few of these wines are not available in the United States (like the Gvaot and Recanati Special Reserve White), however these are all wines worthy of your perseverance and will be well-worth the time and money expenditure.

This year, in addition to the best wines I also included eight of the most exciting or interesting wines I tasted this year turning this week’s edition into quite the long one but worthy of your time – hope you enjoy and would love to hear your 2011 favorites!

Le’Chaim,
Yossie