NOTE: to avoid falling into a tl;dr trap, I am splitting this story into two parts.
I have written here a lot about EVs, and a lot about Israel-Palestine — but very little about the two of them together…
In fact, I did it only once, in 2012: a mid-mortem analysis of the rapid rise and fall of Israel’s Better Place (BP), which went overnight from the company that will lead the global EV revolution — to a pile of rubble. BP’s founder assumed that short range and slow charging are permanent rather than temporary features, and banked on swappable-battery EVs. BP made huge noise internationally, headlined the 2009 propaganda book Start-Up Nation, raised insane amounts of $$ — then spent them even more insanely. They triumphantly completed a national battery-swapping station network in mid-2012. Soon after, bad financial news started, and by spring 2013 BP was belly-up. All attempts to salvage its remnants failed. The thousand-plus Israelis with BP Renault Fluence EVs, many of them former employees, were left to fend for themselves. The shameful nail in the coffin came in 2014: hundreds of never-used, perfectly usable Fluence EVs stranded in an Israeli port, ended up getting scrapped.
Most Israelis concluded that the very concept of EVs was DOA. In the mid-2010s as global auto markets at Israel’s income level started embracing EVs, almost no importer dared bring them to Israel (btw, the other country where BP played heavily, Denmark, also suffered a years-long BP hangover). Then starting a couple of years ago EVs in Israel have showed signs of life again, and 2020 of all years has been transformative. Still, the EV scene is deep in early-adopter territory.
Enter our sweet relatives in sun-drenched southern Israel, on the edge of the desert. Their visits to our Seattle Nissan Leaf home piqued their interest, demonstrating EVs’ matter-of-fact viability. In particular they credit their second son, now 20, who rode with us several times while visiting in 2017 and got hooked. This year when their previous car started dying, he lobbied for an electric replacement and his parents went with it. Unlike us, their approach to such purchases is methodical, thorough and decisive. But even with all the homework they were in for some surprises.
Follow me to learn more about their adventures…
Options, Prices, Ranges
Many Israeli EV policies hail back to BP days, when that company was extremely cozy with the government and essentially wrote the rules. One upside has been a very generous EV tariff exemption from the get-go. Israel has no auto industry (we make tanks, though!), and cars tend to be pricey for two reasons: 1. High tariffs, 2. Importers are greedy pigs. With near-zero EV tariffs, one would expect low/mid-market EVs to be competitively priced in Israel. That’s where the pig element comes in: till recently, prices were inflated as importers viewed the EV constituency as status-waving rich folk.
Then the Chinese showed up in 2020 with their kick-ass SAIC MG ZS EV and GAC GE3. With no brand recognition and coming from China they went for attractive pricing, launching these decent, 250 to 300-km SUVs in Israel at NIS 139k. Seems like Israel was actually the first place outside China to receive the GAC. And now the MG costs only NIS 129k! (currency note: in normal times the NIS has been ~3.4-3.8 per $1; right now there’s a generational-record low of 3.22).
(Price reference: a new Corolla starts at NIS 137k, and gas costs in Israel almost 2x the US price while electricity costs about the same as here. So in terms of market comparison, these new Chinese EVs cost roughly the equivalent of $17-20k after subsidies in the US).
The “Chinese invasion” created a price avalanche, as more established brands started cutting into their piggish EV margins. I don’t think our relatives seriously considered a Chinese EV. Rather, they pondered between two options: a 240-km Nissan Leaf like we have, a model unchanged since 2018; or the Hyundai Ioniq BEV which enjoyed a battery boost to ~275km in 2020. Both were around NIS 150k with the Ioniq costing a few thousand more.
Of course, as I explained in 2017, YRWV (Your Range Will Vary). The single range number is just an anchor around which actual range can change by up to 50% depending on conditions (the Ioniq link above makes a pretty good attempt at describing its range under several conditions). Specifically, the Ioniq’s sleek shape ensures less range loss than the Leaf at higher speeds. Living in the south with parents in the center, and a 70km drive each way to work, our relatives’ EV would see lots of highway driving.
And so it was decided.
They placed their Ioniq order in October. It happened to be the first-ever Ioniq BEV order for the southern region’s Hyundai dealer.
To Be Continued...