Better Place is an Israeli company, with an Australian office, that is delivering electric cars for an enviro-friendly future. Sounds nice in theory but in reality the company, as I have written for a while, operates in the occupied West Bank and should therefore be shunned.
Yet anther mainstream story, this time in the Guardian, glosses over this detail. Don’t believe the hype:
One work-around that seemingly nullifies the concerns over range and charging is the brain child of the world’s most prominent electric car advocate, Shai Agassi. In his native Israel last year, he launched a startup called Better Place that allows electric-car users to swap their drained battery for a new fully charged one at a network of “switch stations” at the same time as it would take to fill a car with petrol. And because Better Place owns the batteries, the owner of the car need not worry about the deteriorating condition or high price of the battery.
If the idea gains traction – Agassi is already in talks with the Chinese government, which promised last year to invest $15bn in seed money to kickstart its own electric car industry – then it could seriously challenge not just our perception of electric cars, but also the interests of oil companies with their vast global network of petrol stations.