I have a new Op Ed at The Times of Israel which provides a brief update on where we are now.
I’m still driving my car and charging it at home, but I no longer have access to battery switch stations or public charge spots. It’s a real shame as these are being operated, but I have no confidence in the company that is now doing this. To that end I refuse to sign the new contract they are proposing.
Even though it would represent me paying again for something I’ve already paid in advance for, if a new company came along to run the network and behaved in a reasonable way, I’d pay. The new owners are not giving me that feeling.
Please read and share my Op Ed. I will be writing more as this develops.
Better Place is the tragedy that keeps giving
First, a chance to lead the world into a new era in transportation was lost – after hundreds of millions of shekels from outside the country was invested in jobs and infrastructure here. Hundreds were put out of work and the driving public was consigned to continuing to live at the mercy of the volatile global oil market, regularly manipulated by its adversaries. Now a circus of a bankruptcy process threatens to extinguish even the small nucleus of infrastructure that remains – setting the country back a decade or more in its effort to break the monopoly of petroleum on transportation.
This, even as Tesla, the US-based electric car manufacturer, has become the darling of Wall Street, with a market value roughly half of General Motors. And Tesla is using its new fortune to do what? To build a nationwide network to service electric cars across the US. At the same moment as Israel sees its network disintegrate.
