I'm trying to be happy, really I am

Tyler Hamilton reports that Ontario is speaking with Better Place, the Israeli organization that is trying to not just bring us electric cars, but totally change the business model for automobiles. I like it a lot, I really do, and if Better Place works out I'll be the first in line. But this got me:

The key to attracting Better Place to Ontario, said Marans, would be for Queen's Park to provide generous consumer incentives for the purchase of electric vehicles. The province would also need a local or foreign manufacturer to get behind the project with a commitment to build electric cars in Ontario.

Uh, Province? Your claim to be supportive would be a lot more credible if the McGuinty government had not spent the last 3 years throwing every possible roadblock in front of actually-existing electric car entrepreneurs like ZENN motors.

Still, if this turns out to be true I'll take it, provided it doesn't mean the Province slants the table in favour of larger, stupider cars when a car like ZENN's exists.

Better Place is an extremely interesting group, btw. You can read a pretty good profile in Wired here. I've always wondered why smaller jurisdictions didn't spend more time looking at electric cars: Hawaii, Iceland, New Zealand, and Israel all have plenty of reason to try to reduce oil imports, and it's not like you can drive that far in Israel before you meet either the Mediterranean or the Arab League.