Bostonist: Beaker Hill: Shai Agassi of Better Place @ MIT

AllisonS

Sun, 07 Dec 2008 10:28:15 -0500

Thanks, Matt. I certainly enjoyed your article and appreciate your quick response. Here's a link to Shai Agassi's talk at Harvard Kennedy School later that day. I'm the one who introduced him. http://www.iop.harvard.edu/Multimedia-Center/All-Videos/The-Future-of-Transportation-Ending-our-addiction-to-Oil

Matt Feltz

Sat, 06 Dec 2008 16:24:21 -0500

Allison-- Thank you for setting the record straight. I'll have to listen to the recording I made again and see specifically what Shai said about the tax rates. I don't particularly blame Better Place for the rates being the way they are, because after all it's in the government's hands at the end of the day. In the end it seems like being a Better Place member is probably a good deal regardless, were you in the market for a brand new car, so it just felt like unnecessary piling-on to have such an exorbitant tax rate. (In Denmark, it was something like 150%.) Hopefully outside of my error, you liked the piece! Matt

AllisonS

Sat, 06 Dec 2008 13:21:13 -0500

Thanks for this article. I'd like to correct one mis-statement. Before Better Place, Israel already had a tax in place on imported vehicles: 72% import tax for gasoline cars, and 10% import tax for electric vehicles. My Israeli relatives can attest to that. Shai Agassi asked the Israeli government to maintain that current tax code, and as the number of EV users increases as a result of more readily-available electric vehicles, to slowly increase the import tax on BOTH types of vehicles while keeping the delta constant. I can't speak for Denmark, but I wanted to correct the impression that Israel put a large tax on gasoline cars in response to Better Place. That tax code was already in place beforehand. Respectfully, AllisonS