Israel cranks electric car with Renault

THE Israeli Government has signaled the clean car market is its next technology target market, signing an incentive-laden deal with the Renault-Nissan Alliance to build electric cars.

Israel has extended tax incentives to cover zero emission vehicles, and has provided incentives to Project Better Place, which is building a world-first national Electric Recharge Grid Infrastructure to support the cars.

The solution framework comes in response to the Israeli State’s challenge to the auto industry and its supply chain to migrate the country’s transportation infrastructure to renewable sources of energy.

The Renault vehicles are not hybrids – the will run entirely on electricity for all finctions and would provide a similar driving performance to a standard 1.6 litre gas engine.

The alliance with Project Better Place has put forward a business model in which for the first time in the electric vehicle business the ownership of the car is separated from the ownership of the battery.

Consumers will buy and own the car and subscribe to the energy, including the use of a battery on a kilometers-driven basis.

California-based Project Better Place plans to deploy a massive network of battery charging spots. Driving range will no longer be an obstacle, because customers will be able to plug their cars into charging units in any of the 500,000 charging spots in Israel. An on-board computer system will indicate to the driver the remaining power supply and the nearest charging spot.

The Better Place Project is the brain child of former SAP number two Shia Agassi.

The Renault Nissan Alliance said Israel was the perfect market to start a worldwide effort toward electric cars, with 90 per cent of car owners driving less than 70 kilometres per day – and all major urban centres being less than 150kms apart.

Along with Project Better Place, Israel would become the first illustration of the Alliance’s commitment to mass-market zero-emission vehicles all over the world.

The Renault Nissan Alliance is a combination of the French and Japanese car makers. Renault owns 44 per cent of Nissan, while Nissan owns 15 per cent of Renault.

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Nissan pilots intelligent transport system

DRIVERS who get easily frustrated sitting at red traffic lights when there are no other cars around will be happy with research being conducted at Nissan.

The auto-maker has moved to the next stage of its ambitious intelligent transport system (ITS) project that employs vehicle-to-infrastructure communications that allows synchronised communications between vehicles and traffic signals.

The company has started deploying intelligent traffic lights at its Nissan Technical Centre in Kanawaga Prefecture in Japan to collect real-world data from several hundred employee cars participating in the project.

The new traffic system aims to help reduce accidents as well as ease traffic congestion – specifically at traffic light intersections – leading to improved on-the-road fuel consumption.

Two intersecting main roads within the company’s research centre, each with multiple intersections and crosswalks, provide the basic parameters for the ITS experiment.

Nissan has installed standard traffic lights and roadside optical beacons along these test-roads. For specific data to support the development of the navigation program being tested, hundreds of employees’ cars will be equipped with the specially designed vehicle information and communications system units.

Based on traffic volumes, the system will calculate to optimise the timing lapse between crossing pedestrians and the change in traffic-signal.

Under the Nissan Green Program 2010, announced in December 2006,
Nissan is working to develop the new technologies to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions and the ITS project in Kanagawa contributes by reducing traffic congestion.

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