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Texas to Tel Aviv
What would happen if you cross-bred J. R. Ewing of Dallas and Carl Pope, the head of the Sierra Club? You'd get T. Boone Pickens. What would happen if you cross-bred Henry Ford and Yitzhak Rabin? You'd get Shai Agassi.

Gov. Corzine wraps up trade mission to Israel
Gov. Jon Corzine's five-day trade mission to Israel wrapped up today with a flurry of tours, meetings and a test-drive so quick he never left the parking lot. That followed a hectic pace that had the governor rushing from the holy sites of Jerusalem to the edge of the Gaza border to the buzzing hub of Tel Aviv.

[Interview with Shai Agassi] The saviour of the electric car
Although electric vehicles (EVs) offer great potential for extremely low-emissions motoring, they will be of limited use without public plug-in recharging points. Silicon Valley start-up Project Better Place has allied itself with Renault and Nissan and aims to eliminate this problem by building a plug-in recharging infrastructure in countries that sign up to its scheme. We talk to Project Better Place founder and CEO Shai Agassi.

UK may join Project Better Place
UK daily "The Independent" reports that UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown wants to convert Britain's car industry to electrical vehicles and adopt the recharging and battery replacement model being developed by Shai Agassi, or a similar model. The paper says that Brown "will meet manufacturers this week to try to persuade them to mass-produce electric cars, and is considering a remarkable plan to sell the cars cheap, together with their fuel, that is modeled on mobile-phone contracts."

US: Nissan partners with Tennessee to promote electric cars
Carlos Ghosn, president and chief executive of Nissan, announced on 22 July that Nissan and the State of Tennessee and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) are forming a partnership to promote zero emission vehicles, reports the Detroit Free Press.

Solar Thermal Power Coming to a Boil
After emerging in 2006 from 15 years of hibernation, the solar thermal power industry experienced a surge in 2007, with 100 megawatts of new capacity coming online worldwide. During the 1990s, cheap fossil fuels, combined with a loss of state and federal incentives, put a damper on solar thermal power development. However, recent increases in energy prices, escalating concerns about global climate change, and fresh economic incentives are renewing interest in this technology.

Israel File :: Foreign Investors Look For Green In Israeli Clean-Tech Ventures
From cutting-edge geothermal power deep underground to wind turbines and solar panels capturing energy from the sky above, foreign investors are pouring money into Israel's growing clean tech sector. And it's not just Jews. "Every day I get calls from people asking for opportunities to invest in clean technologies in Israel," said Michael Granoff, president of the New York-based Maniv Energy Capital and an investor in Project Better Place, the company working to make Israel a testing ground for an electric car.

Electric vehicles in the spotlight
A jam-packed day of news from newly un-stealthed Coulomb Technologies, GM, Renault-Nissan, the city of San Jose, the state of Tennessee and the prime minister of the U.K. Car makers, electric car chargers, two mayors and one prime minister all made the call for more electric, hybrid and plug-in hybrid cars and an infrastructure to support the vehicles.

Nissan and Tennessee Form Zero-Emissions Vehicle Partnership
Nissan and the State of Tennessee are forming a partnership to promote zero-emission vehicles (ZEV), including electric vehicles, in Middle Tennessee with participation from the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) and other partners. This marks the Renault-Nissan Alliance's fourth such ZEV initiative, and the first one in the US.

GM partners with utilities to advance plug-in hybrids
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, meanwhile, hopes for his city to become a hub for electric cars.

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