Over 400 electric vehicle charging stations have been built in Israel since June and the country says it is on track to build a total of 100,000 such stations by 2010. Yesterday, Israel officially began an initiative aimed at reducing the country’s dependence on oil with a fleet of electric cars developed by Renault- Nissan . The electric cars are set to be on Israel’s streets by 2011.
With the help of Project Better Place, a California-based company, the country is building a massive infrastructure that it hopes will lure Israelis out of gasoline cars and into electric cars.
Pini Leiberman, the infrastructure manager of Project Better Place, says that the cars will cost less to operate than equivalent gasoline-fueled vehicles. The charging stations, which will be located every 25 miles in rural areas and will be much more widespread in cities, will calculate the cost of charging based on the number of miles the car drove between charges.
The company is also developing battery changing stations to swap out drained batteries for new ones for drivers who don’t have time to recharge.
If the initiative comes together as planned, Israel is set to be the first country to have a large fleet of electric cars operating on its streets.
