Tomorrow marks one week since the receiver was called in to Better Place. I’ve been so busy this week I’ve not kept people up to date here at Israellycool and for this I apologise.
The biggest news is that we have guaranteed operation of all of Better Place’s services for customers (switching, charging and telephone support) until June 13th. Contrary to an erroneous report in Globes, after that time the Receiver has not confirmed switch off. In fact, she understands that switching off the network will dramatically reduce it’s value so she will try to avoid that.
We’re in an undead zombie mode: so I’m driving my car like crazy… I’m not going to use the 60,000 more KMs I’ve paid for, but I’ll make a dent. On Thursday (the day I went to the Knesset) I covered over 450km, my largest single daily total. I’ll write a separate post just about that and link to it.
I’ve given a number of interviews. The Jerusalem Post published a long glowing review of the car and service centred mostly around my comments and the Times of Israel also extensively quoted me.
The Hebrew press has also published many articles that range from barely believable to down right lies. Interspersed in there it’s been hard to hide the fact that the vast majority of owners absolutely loved their cars and the service. There are some very unlucky people who’ve paid deposits but not received cars or have cars but haven’t had their home charge spots completed. They’re in a tricky situation and I’d expect them to be very angry.
An Electronic Vehicle Amutah (non-profit organization) was formed before the insolvency to represent the interested of EV owners. I was involved in this as it was meant to be advocating for EV’s in Israel in general along the lines of similar organisations in the US and Europe. There is a ?100 joining fee, I joined a few weeks ago before the collapse.
The director is Efi Shahak. They now have an online registration form with an easy to remember URL: . It’s in Hebrew but if you need help please contact me or leave a note on the Facebook page.
There is another Facebook page for actual customers to look at, again mostly in Hebrew, which is a dedicated Better Place customer page and was the most active place for customers before the collapse. It was frequented by Better Place staff, but now only those who are also customers are still there (as far as I know).
