I’ve written a lot about the experience and I’m still as positive as I was that day. I’ve heard from many people who’ve bought electric cars, partly helped by my writing and I get a tremendously positive feeling when I hear those stories.

I have two new articles up today, the most comprehensive review of my year will be published a little later at Green Car Reports. It covers one year in a Better Place car.

I’ve also penned a companion piece for Times of Israel which answers a variety of questions that myself and fellow electric car pioneers get asked while we are driving and parking our cars.

Green Car Reports has published a report of mine laying out the sales improvements at Better Place

Overall sales in 2013 have been pretty good. The company is delivering cars at about the maximum rate it can.

This year, Better Place has reported the following sales figures:

• Jan: 102
• Feb: 113
• Mar: 82
• Apr: 125

A couple of notes: Deliveries last December were less than 10–but January was Better Place’s best-ever month. March deliveries were low because the Passover holiday cut the number of working days dramatically; most Israeli businesses experience the same slowdown.

Better Place Renault Fluence ZE on the streets of Jerusalem
The total deliveries of 422 cars through April represents 0.5 percent to 0.8 percent of the Israeli car market. The Better Place total matches sales of the well-established Toyota Prius, at 400 thus far this year. The best-selling car in Israel this year is the Ford Focus, at 4,512.

Comparing Israel to the U.S. (8 million people versus 311 million), the April figure of 125 cars–adjusted for much higher U.S. car ownership–would equate to sales of 8,888 cars a month in the U.S.

Read the whole thing.

And in a new development, Green Car Reports has also uncovered the fact that Tesla may strongly be considering some battery switching system for their Model S. We shall see.

Illustrative only.

Alternative title from Shawn on Facebook: “New from Michelin: Evil Killer Zionist Settler Tires®”.

A stone throwing Arab in Samaria lies dead after a ‘Settler’ fires his gun. But all is not what it seems.

The science is in: he was definitively killed by his own rock when it bounced back from a tyre and hit him on the head.

Arutz 7 (Israel National News) has the final verdict on an Arab ‘stone’ thrower who was mysteriously killed while throwing large rocks at passing cars.

Police originally believed that the resident of Emmanuel who reported firing in the air had in fact fired at his attacker, killing him. The man was arrested and questioned. However, an initial forensic report showed that the attacker had not been killed by a bullet, and the detainee was released.

A final forensic report, released over the weekend, showed that the attacker was killed when a stone he threw hit the car driven by the man from Emmanuel. The stone hit the car’s tire and bounced back at high speed, hitting the attacker and leaving him with a fatal head injury.

Trains Rolling Along And ‘Jews Living Happily in Auschwitz’

Trains are moving efficiently toward the new homes of the Jews and many hundreds of thousands of them are now ‘living happily in Auschwitz’ and the other ‘holiday camps’ we have set up for them said moderate Nazi minister of Public Enlightenment, Joseph Goebbels.

How would that be for a headline and first paragraph of a story?

Lets try another one:

Obama’s administration presents a ‘forged birth certificate’

In response to demands that he prove he was not born in Kenya, Obama’s administration has released a clearly forged ‘Certificate of Live Birth’ said leading campaigners for truth and justice.

This is fun, I’m on a roll here.

Bombing attacks on trains and buses in London ‘completely justified’

A leading Muslim cleric in London today claimed blowing up British ‘citizens on their way to work’ was completely justified because of British participation in killing Muslims in Afghanistan.

Oh wait, I haven’t done Israel yet! How stupid of me:

Israeli strikes on Syria ‘co-ordinated with terrorists’

Israeli strikes on Syrian army targets show co-ordination with ‘terrorists’ including al-Qaeda linked militants, the Syrian foreign ministry has said.

No serious, credible news agency would ever write headlines and first paragraphs as inflammatory and so obviously based on ridiculous sources right?

They’d be acting as a mouth piece for the worst murderers and despots in the world if they did. Right? Of course they wouldn’t.

Which is why, of course, the last one is (as I write this) still on the BBC’s website hours after I first saw it.

Balance? If you live in the UK you pay for this evil.

And this is from the actual home page of the entire BBC News site:

Elder of Zion also has a post on this. Honest Reporting is correctly pointing out that the rarely used word “terrorist” is being thrown around with gay abandon when it is Israel in the frame for cavorting with “terrorists”.

UK Defence Secretary Philip Hammond says Israel has “drawn a red line” around “weapons moving towards Hezbollah” from Syria #MarrShow

— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) May 5, 2013

Israel doesn’t need to draw any new red lines or lines in the sand or any other nonsense. They were all firmly drawn by United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701 (UNSC-1701):

– no sales or supply of arms and related materiel to Lebanon except as authorized by its Government;

Seeing as the UN is in no fit state to gaurantee anything related to Syria or it’s (very binding) Security Council Resolutions, Israel has to go in and do the job itself. Because it is me and my kids who these weapons are aimed at and I don’t want to end up like the tens of thousands of dead in Syria.

Perhaps the only 1701 Philip Hammond and the BBC can remember is the USS Enterprise starship, NCC-1701.

h/t to Judge Dan for spotting the tweet.

“This peace initiative is making me sick!”

The story so far. The New York Times publishes an interview by Roger Cohen with former Palestinian Prime Minister, Salam Fayyad with direct quotes like:

“Our story is a story of failed leadership, from way early on,” Fayyad tells me. “It is incredible that the fate of the Palestinian people has been in the hands of leaders so entirely casual, so guided by spur-of-the-moment decisions, without seriousness. We don’t strategize, we cut deals in a tactical way and we hold ourselves hostage to our own rhetoric.”

Now the Palestinian News Agency publishes this:

RAMALLAH, May 4, 2013 (WAFA) – Prime Minister Salam Fayyad’s office Saturday denied statements slamming the Palestinian leadership which were attributed to Fayyad in an interview with the New York Times.

Fayyad’s office said in a statement, “The statements in the article are just journalist Roger Cohen’s personal impressions, and certainly not the words of Fayyad, who did not make any statements or conduct interviews for the New York Times or any other newspaper or agency since his resignation.”

The New York Times published on May 3 an article titled “Fayyad Steps Down, Not Out” by Cohen, in which Fayyad allegedly described the Palestinian leadership as “failed”.

Cohen quoted Fayyad saying “It is incredible that the fate of the Palestinian people has been in the hands of leaders so entirely casual, so guided by spur-of-the-moment decisions, without seriousness. We don’t strategize, we cut deals in a tactical way and we hold ourselves hostage to our own rhetoric.”

Cohen’s article caused an uproar among Palestinians while Fayyad’s office said that this article must not be published as an interview with Fayyad.

M.H.

Trying to decide which of these two routinely lying sources is lying is like dropping a cat with buttered toast strapped to its back, butter side up, and waiting to see if the cat lands on its feet or the toast lands on the butter.

People have made quite a big deal out of this with numerous main stream reports.

In an Israellycool exclusive, however, we can now reveal the next version of the page for Israel’s variant of  Google: google.co.il

[Do note: the name of the country seems to disappear when Google uses one of it's customised google doodles to commemorate some special event.]

With special thanks to star editor Jono.

So the following report caught my eye and I really hope this system gets built!

Cable car to link Western Wall with rest of Jerusalem

Posted on May 1, 2013 by JNS.org.
(JNS.org) The city of Jerusalem is moving forward with a plan to build a cable car system that will bring visitors to and from the Western Wall.

One line will connect Dung Gate (the Old City gate closest to the Western Wall) with the Mount of Olives to the east, and a second line will connect Dung Gate with the Khan Theater on Hinnom Ridge to the west, Israel Hayom reported.

The system will be able to transport 6,000 passengers per hour. Each of the 1.6 kilometer routes will take around four minutes to traverse.

Jerusalem municipal officials said the cable car system will meet the needs of the growing millions of people who visit the Western Wall and the Old City each year.

“Beyond being a transportation solution, the cable car will also serve as a unique and innovative tourist attraction that will provide breathtaking views,” Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat said.