Israeli electric car infrastructure company Better Place will start importing and distributing Renault’s first passenger electric vehicle – the Fluence ZE, five-seat sedan – to Israel in the first half of 2011 and will market it via subscriptions to customers from the Renault network in Denmark.

Better Place and French car manufacturer Renault are committed to a volume of at least 100,000 vehicles for both countries by 2016, under the terms of a new agreement.

The agreement marks nearly two years of development effort in creating the world’s first mass market zero-emission vehicle with switchable battery.

The battery for the Fluence ZE can be completely re-charged via a standard charge (between four and eight hours) or an immediate solution (under five minutes).

The Israel operations for multi-national companies including Cisco, FedEx and IBM (representing approximately 35,000 ICE, or internal combustion engine, vehicles) have committed to convert a portion of their ICE fleets to Better Place when commercially available in 2011.

Based in California and privately held, Better Place has operating companies in Israel, Denmark and Australia and partnerships in North America.