Project Better Place

Palo Alto, Calif. (April 17, 2008) – Project Better Place today appointed Ziva Patir to lead the company’s international standardization efforts worldwide. In this role Patir will define and promote Better Place’s technical standards and ensure compliance with requirements set by international standards organizations. She will also lead partner collaboration on existing and future standards to promote consensus across the industry.

“Transportation transcends borders,” said Shai Agassi, CEO, Better Place. ”It is crucial to have requirements in place that are uniform around the world to allow for free movement from one country to another.”

Patir will be based at the company’s primary research and development center in Tel Aviv, Israel. Her work will be vital to establishing the conditions needed to generate the economies of scale that will make the mass adoption of electric vehicles possible.

In January, Better Place announced a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Renault-Nissan to build the world's first Electric Recharge Grid Operator (ERGO) model for clean transportation in Israel. Under the agreement, Better Place will build the electric recharge grid, and Renault-Nissan will provide the electric vehicles. Next year, Better Place expects to deploy hundreds of charging stations as the company moves toward wide-scale deployment in 2011.

“Better Place is already adopting international standards that are developing in the field of electric cars, and we will work to promote rapid compliance in this field,” said Patir. “I look forward to working closely with standards organizations and our research and development partners to executing against Better Place’s vision to help countries declare oil independence."

Patir has been actively involved in work to develop technical standards for electric cars. She represented Israel on two international standardization committees in Sweden last year, with the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). These meetings brought together representatives from leading car companies and the most distinguished research institutes in the field, indicating that electric car technology has matured and is being standardized for mass deployment.
Prior to joining Better Place, Patir was director general of the Standard Institution of Israel (SII) for more than a decade. In the past four years she served as chair of the Technical Management Board and vice president of the ISO. The ISO has 158 member states and formulates international standards adopted worldwide.

About Project Better Place
Project Better Place is a venture-backed company that aims to reduce global dependency on oil through the creation of a market-based transportation infrastructure that supports electric vehicles, providing consumers with a cleaner, sustainable, personal transportation alternative. Launched in October 2007, Better Place will build its first Electric Recharge Grids in Israel and Denmark and plans to deploy the infrastructure on a country-by-country basis with initial deployments beginning in 2010. For more information, please visit www.projectbetterplace.com.

Media Contact:
Stephanie Mirshak
+1-202-944-1933
stephanie.mirshak@hillandknowlton.com

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