Better Place could have shown that the system works by incorporating the battery and electric engine into CITY buses. The real estate is there, the buses are there, the routes are known - and they pollute.

The problem with Better Place was the company's deeply-flawed business model that never made sense from the beginning! In an age where battery charging ranges are approaching 150 km and projected to reach 400-500 km in a few years, who is going to need Better Place's cumbersome and expensive battery swapping scheme? And if already destined to become obsolete, who would want to fund the company's elaborate infrastructure to begin with? In short, Better Place was always a stock promotion instead of a real business that made sense. Israeli and other investors fell for Agassi's hype and are now bound to lose hundreds of millions of dollars. But the company's unfolding heralds good news for the EV (Electric Vehicle) Industry as a whole. This is because, while Better Place falsely represented itself as an EV technology leader, its unworkable scheme kept giving the whole EV Industry a bad name!

Imagine that. Shai and his brother and his sister were all pulling in big fat salary checks this whole time as though they were the most experienced and capable people to do it. Shai Agassi is a good looking guy, that knows how to make a good sales pitch, and we will soon see if we are not left with a white elephant in terms of changing stations that sit idle, and a Renault car that never made it out of the gate.

Not all gas stations have a battery exchange so you want to go for a drive out of town your going to have a problem when your battery runs down. Cars are expensive and there is only one style and its a little car which limits your market bacayse families often need bigger cars and richer people like more stylish cars. If Reneault have a monopoly there will be no choice and it won't bring cars prices down Its not much cheaper than filling up a regular car so no huge savings. Electric cars may or may not be the future but short - medium term the future is Hybrid and there are alot of companies making them in different styles and prices are coming down. The government should slash the import prices for hybrid cars and make up the loss by making regular cars more expensive. Israeli arms companies should be encougraged to use hybrid engines in domestically made military vehicles because long term saves the army alot of money on fuel & e engines are imported anyway so easy enough to change the engines they buy.

the wife and I are relieved we bought a PRius and not the better price toy.