Can Captain Sunshine Save the Israeli Electric Car Dream?
Captain Sunshine wears a yellow yarmulke, yellow T-shirt and a bright-yellow cape held around his shoulders with a silky red ribbon. At a recent rally of about 200 electric-car owners in Israel, he called out questions to the crowd.
"We're saying to the government and to the army," he shouted through a squawky mic, "20 percent of your fleets should be electric cars. Do you agree?"
The crowd cheered yes.
"We're saying to the finance ministry zero usage tax and zero purchase tax. Do you agree?" Again, yes. "And we're saying, of course, we would like to add renewable energy to power our cars. Do you agree?" Yes, yes, they wholeheartedly agreed.
Captain Sunshine is really Yosef Abramowitz, a successful American-Israeli solar entrepreneur. When Better Place, a much-touted, highly innovative Israeli electric car company went belly-up last month, Abramowitz saw an opportunity.
"We want to take the remaining assets of Better Place and turn it into a national project, recognized by the government as a national asset," he said. "We see it as a technology and service platform, for all electric vehicles, current and future, in the state of Israel."
Better Place broke new ground by building a network of 38 battery-swap stations around Israel. This meant that owners of Better Place cars could take long road trips without having to stop for hours to recharge. Battery-swapping represented a fundamental change in electric vehicle use, and the idea got a lot attention.
As the company was raising $850 million from investors, founder Shai Agassi did a TED talk. He appeared at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and was tapped as one of the WEF's Young Global Leaders. He was featured in the book Start-up Nation, which sings the praises of innovation in Israel. And customers like Chaim and Debbie Abramowitz (no relation to Yosef Abramowitz) loved the battery-swap system.
"We don't have to do anything," says Debbie, as we pull into a swap station near Jerusalem. Nobody does. We sit in the car while it's automatically raised a few inches. A mechanical system removes the spent battery from below and installs a fresh one. The process takes less than 6 1/2 minutes.
On a spontaneous day trip around scenic spots in Israel recently, the couple changed batteries three or four times.
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