Better not place your money there.

Okay, so in the middle of all this mess on the news, Better Place finally published the prices of their electric cars and their service agreements. This is just a preliminary draft, but you can already spot that they made a major marketing mistake.

First of all, the Renault Fluence vehicles. They are priced at over 120K nis, which is the same as their gas-powered counterparts. The only thing they forgot to take into account, is that electric vehicles are taxed at 10%, while gas-based ones pay 78%. Let's assume that they cost more-or-less the same to manufacture, and you start to wonder: where does the money go?

Second, the service agreement. Let's say that you currently drive an economical car, one that goes 10km per liter, and you drive 20,000km per year. You will then need 2,000 liters of gas, and will pay (at 7.7 nis/liter) a sum of 15,400 nis each year, or 1283 nis a month. The cheapest Better Place service agreement for 1 month is 1090 nis a month. Big deal!

And last but not least - who's gonna buy those cars anyway? The technology has just come around, and things are changing rapidly. The "latest and greatest" of 3 years from now will have nothing in common with what they offer today. The car will become an unsellable lump of metal.

In short, one huge flop.