Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Israel's Electric Cars

http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,2066975,00.html
Shai Agassi, the founder of Better Place, the most sophisticated
electric-car enterprise in the world, projects the ebullient
confidence of a man facing a giant wave of money. "Within less than
this decade the No. 1–selling car in the world will be the electric
car," he says. "It's the biggest financial opportunity the world has
ever seen. We're seeing a $10 trillion shift in an industry in less
than a decade. It's the Internet, and add another zero."
In the introduction to Start-Up Nation, Dan Senor and Saul Singer's
best-selling paean to Israeli innovation, Agassi was the soft-spoken
software wiz who had a brilliant idea and a terrible time locating a
backer. That doesn't seem to be a problem anymore. "Not when you've
digitized the most expensive molecule on the planet," he says. "We've
digitized oil." He pauses. "I'll put it this way: We have people from
China here." (Read about how China can take the wheel on electric
cars.)
The People's Republic has been busy creating a bourgeoisie, and the
middle class does like to drive. Beijing's next five-year plan
foresees at least 170 million new vehicles, or perhaps twice that,
according to Agassi. The lower estimate alone is as many cars as there
are in Germany, France, Spain, Italy and Britain combined. The 8
million barrels of oil that would be required every day to fuel them
is about as much as the U.S. imports every day. "Do you know what the
price of oil will be in five years if they're not using electric
cars?" Agassi asks.
Enter Better Place, the start-up that makes more than electric cars.
It also makes an entire infrastructure intended to free automobiles
from the stubborn limits of battery life. When the enterprise launches
in Israel later this year, drivers should be able to travel anywhere
in the country in cars with a battery range of 100 miles (160 km). If
they set off from Tel Aviv to the Red Sea, a journey of 200 miles (320
km), they will be able to pull into a Better Place station along the
highway and exchange their low battery for a fully charged one. The
process should take about five minutes. Otherwise, the car can
recharge overnight via a plug that snaps into the little door above
the rear wheel where gas would go if the car burned gas. The vehicles
can also trickle charge in parking lots where the company's
distinctive blue-topped posts are located.
Everything you need to know — the locations of switch stations and
charging posts, the number of motorists already there, your own
distance from each — is visible on a dashboard GPS screen. Employees
have been testing the system for weeks, seeing, for instance, how much
juice it takes to drive from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem with a car full of
fat people, a carload of skinny people or just a car. By July, Better
Place expects to begin taking individual orders for the Turkish-made
Renault Fluence Z.E. (for Zero Emission), a four-door sedan that looks
like any other car. Ordinary Israelis could be driving them as early
as November. (Read about the history of green energy.)
"It's going to depend on the price — of the car, and any charge for
the battery, or charging the battery," says Dror Aikar, a Hyundai
owner waiting for a tour of the Better Place showroom that 75,000
people have already passed through. Within sight of the beach north of
Tel Aviv, it was built on the ruins of an oil-tank farm. Aikar wants
to help the environment, he says. "But you can't do it if you don't
have the money to do it."
The pricing will be in two parts: First there's the car itself, which
the consumer buys outright, except for the battery. That remains with
Better Place, and comes with the "subscription," which is what Better
Place calls access to the power infrastructure to run the car. The
model is cell-phone coverage, with a variety of rate plans that vary
with how much you drive. Rates for Israel are not yet final, but in
Denmark, where the company is also setting up, the lowest rate is
equivalent to about $300 a month for mileage of 6,200 miles (10,000
km); the highest rate — for unlimited miles — is about twice as much.
The customers also pay a one-time fee equal to $2,000, but even so, in
both Israel and Denmark where gas runs about $9 a gallon, Better Place
calculates that the typical customers would stand to save 10% to 20%
against a comparable gasoline car — and enjoy most of its
satisfactions. "The car is very, very, very fun to drive," Agassi
says. (See the best inventions of 2010.)
The electric sedan Agassi says will change the world, well, feels like
a regular car. On the test track, the Renault four-door (a retrofitted
Laguna, the Fluences are not yet on site) zooms smoothly down the
straight, silent and more comfortable than, say, a Prius. The one
similarity is that from a standing start there's a wee lag, more like
the Prius than the G-force jackrabbit start of the Tesla, the torqued-
up all-electric sports car with a base price of $108,000. "It's sub–10
seconds zero to 60," says Agassi, of his ride. "If you want to go zero
to 60 in five seconds you want the Tesla. If you've got another five
seconds to spare, I can save you $80,000."

 Shai Agassi, the founder of Better Place, the most sophisticated
Di questo Agassi se ne era scritto anche tempo fa.
Quando andavo alle elementari mi regalarono un libro illustrato sulle 
fonti di energia. In fondo c'era un'immagine di un Tokamak, le centrali 
a fusione nucleare sembravano imminenti. E poi l'auto del 2000: sullo 
sfondo, le nuove centrali, in primo piano due auto elettriche blu e 
rossa simili a una Lamborghini che scambiavano la batteria esaurita da 
un distributore automatico. La batteria era più piccola di un normale 
accumulatore al piombo per l'avviamento.
Tutto questo per ricordare che attualmente il peso delle batterie nelle 
auto elettriche è ancora molto elevato, per non parlare dell'imgombro e 
del posizionamento (che è fisso). Non so che tecnologia abbia questo 
tizio per risolvere questi problemi, ma se esiste veramente deve essere 
a livelli EEStor.
fe...@delenda.net
-- 
http://delendanet.blogspot.com

 Di questo Agassi se ne era scritto anche tempo fa.
Un tizio con buone idee, che è cresciuto in una company del paese che 
edita il Guardian per andare a lavorare in Israele insieme ai 
Mangia-rane con fondi statali.
Paradigmatico.
-- 
*Sunspot*
Life is a beautiful, magnificent thing, even to a jellyfish.

 Paradigmatico.
e' anche nato nel 1968. Giovane, pero'.

 Mangia-rane con fondi statali.
immagino che TB si lamenterà della deriva avellinese di SION

 
http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,2066975,00.html
Ne avevo letto anni fa su Wired, ganzo
PP


Comunque la tecnologia (francese, di israeliano c'è il marketing) è questa:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renault_Fluence_Z.E
.
Un passo verso un'usabilità reale, ma di strada ancora ce ne vuole.
fe...@delenda.net
-- 
http://delendanet.blogspot.com

 Comunque la tecnologia (francese, di israeliano c'è il marketing) è questa:
Non hai fatto la ricerchina
PP

 Non hai fatto la ricerchina
Ci ha provato ma aveva il monitor pieno di segatura
-- 
recoil is insignificant when there is a tiger on the head of your elephant


La tecnologia è di Renault/Nissan e le batterie sono LiIon. 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renault_Fluence_Z.E
.
Better Place mette una rete di stazioni di servizio per la sostituzione 
delle batterie.
Bisognerà capire se la criticità non si sposterà dal petrolio 
all'approvvigionamento di batterie. Si tratta di una tecnologia ancora 
delicata con grossi problemi di affidabilità e sicurezza e la capacità 
roduttiva mi sembra sia ancora insufficiente per un servizio così esteso.
Per fare un esempio del problema la Nissan ha dovuto interrompere la 
raccolta ordini della Leaf e GM ha ridotto i piani di produzione delle Volt 
per il 2011 da 60000 a 20.000 auto/anno per la difficoltà ad 
approvvigionarsi di batterie.
Sono gli stessi motivi che hanno spinto Toyota ed Honda ad usare ancora le 
vecchie NiMh per le loro ibride da grandi volumi come la Insight e la Prius.
Inoltre il contratto non mi sembra così conveniente se si parla di 300 
euro/mese per 10.000 chilometri all'anno  o 600 euro/mese per chilometri 
illimitati.
Negli Usa per quel prezzo ti danno una Nissan Leaf da 35.000 dls.
Insomma, un business ancora tutto da sviluppare, ma vale la pena augurare 
buona fortuna a Agassi.
--
IMe