Last update - 00:00 14/11/2007
Driver's seat / Who needs an electric car anyway?
By Avi Bar-Eli
During the last two weeks, we seem to have been under the spell of the Vision. Namely, the Vision of the Electric Car. It's become almost messianic in its purported powers.
Hail ye, hail ye, electric car: We do not question your merits, we stand in awe of the innovation while, at the same time, we calculate on a napkin just what its economic potential might be, not to mention its contribution to the environment, to society, to world peace. Hail ye!
Yesterday we learned that our ministers in government have hastened to worship at the altar. Any day now fisticuffs will break out in cabinet over who will have the privilege of heaping the most benefits on the electric car initiative, and outshine his or her rivals in government. One suggests completely removing the import tax on electric cars. Another delivers a blow by proposing to relax various regulations, the sort of regulatory relief that the real estate market and infrastructure sector have been seeking for decades. Hail ye, o car!
But have any of them slammed on the brakes to ponder what economic benefits Israel - or the world - might stand to gain, in practice, from encouraging people to buy the beasts?
Recently the Transport Ministry initiated a study on the cost of traffic congestion. The study aims to quantify the number of lost work hours, following a similar research project in the United States. The American study delivered a number: a loss of $70 billion a year to the economy as a consequence of traffic jams. Israel also has several catastrophe-scenario forecasts suggesting that the country's infrastructure will be unable to handle the growing number of cars used in its metropolises.
Has anybody actually checked how this gauzy vision of electric cars is supposed to solve the dreadful problems we are expected to face? Or why, in an era when the emphasis is on mass transportation, the state is striding backwards and insisting on promoting yesterday's vehicle, instead of tomorrow's?
Has anybody considered how much more smog 1,000 electric cars will have caused in 10 years' time, compared with the amount of smog we could have been spared if people eschewed these conveniences and traveled by train? The state is prepared to waive the tax on electric cars, but perhaps instead of doing that, it should waive the import tax on buses.
The answer is, that beneath the cloak of optimistic words, there are hidden facts that we choose to forget. We preferred to focus on the gimmick. No one asks by just what authority the state has chosen to mobilize its powers for the benefit of this initiative, as opposed to hundreds of others equally worthy of support.
With all due respect to the initiative of Shay Agassi and Idan Ofer, a wave of public support orchestrated by a well-oiled public campaign shouldn't dictate economic and strategic policy for Israel. And of course, neither this nor any other initiative can be exempted from the principals of good governance.