Tesla is a small scale producer, so their market sizes can be quite small (Norway's population is 5 million and a key market). What drives the market is desire, money and charging. It seems Israel has the first two but hasn't got a good charging infrastructure yet. Once it does, combined with increased incentives for electric cars, I imagine it'll be a good market for them.

Oh, Better Place. I met their CEO once. He's really good looking, he's a great speaker, and his business plan made no sense. They burned through about a billion dollars and never did more than a few demos and a few hundred Renaults driven by their employees. But he was really good at getting close to heads of state and issuing press releases.

The whole battery swap thing was a bet against batteries and charging technology getting better.