14 DAY TRIAL // When considering the possibility of purchasing an electric car, most consumers worry about running out of energy and not having where to recharge it. This is the reason why Shai Agassi and his company, Better Place, have decided to build four electric car charging stations in northern Israel.
Better Place came up with their electric car after entering a partnership with the French automaker Renault, their end goal – which they succeeded in achieving – being to build a version of Renault's Fluence car, reports ENN.com.
Apparently, the northern region of Israel was chosen as the central stage for this project due to the fact that the people here are very keen on modern technology.
To avoid making electric car owners wait for their car batteries to charge, Better Place even developed a rather innovative idea: those traveling by means of electric cars can simply change their batteries when reaching the station and then carry on with their journey.
Since Better Place owns both the batteries and the stations, they can take care of charging them after the customer leaves. With a new set of batteries, the car will run for about 100 miles without any kind of problems.
Better Place first introduced this concept in Hawaii, in 2011. Here, to make things even easier for customers, Better Place designed and made readily available a map of all the charge spots in the region.
It is expected soon enough that they will do the same in Israel, especially if things go as planned and, by the second half of the year, 40 charging stations will be operating in this country.
In the near future, this technology is to be implemented in Denmark, Australia and California. Better Place's plan is to develop such charging networks in these countries as well, thus making the choice of an electric car much more appealing to the general public.