Q:Name: Shelley
If I purchase an electric car can it simply be shipped with other household goods? it does not have an engine so it should not be subject to automobile restrictions/taxes... If instead I purchase a Smart car, because it is so small, can it be part of a lift, or must it go as a car? it's engine is 0.7 liters.
Thanks

A: Dear Shelley,

Shipping a car is always in interesting adventure!

I will separate your question into two parts: one - shipping issues and second - Customs issues.

From a shipping point of view, we can ship a car, Smart, Dumb, Electric or otherwise in the same container with your household goods. The process is as follows: if you are shipping an exclusive container, first we would load your regular household goods, then build a wall and finally load your car. The car would be blocked, braced and lashed in the container to prevent any movement which would cause scratching and denting.

If you are shipping a partial container (a consolidation) all the crates of household goods (yours and other people's) would be loaded in the front (or nose!) of the container. Then your car is loaded last, nearest the door where it is lashed, blocked and braced.

Btw, blocking and lashing is of critical importance as waves will rock the container for many days. If the vehicle is not tightly strapped down, it will rub against the container's side potentially sustaining significant damage.

Now, let's talk about Custom's issues. The car size makes no difference to Customs. A vehicle must always be cleared separately from household goods and in Israel is treated as a separate shipment (although it will *not* count as one of your 3 "oleh rights" shipments.) This usually means separate and additional clearing expenses.

Electric cars are very rare and potentially problematic to import at this point as Customs and Ministry of Transportation do not have a lot (any?) experience with them. As far as I know, there are no organized codes in effect for purely electric cars.

If you are talking about a hybrid car, it is treated the same as a regular car and a Smart is also a regular car as far as Customs is concerned. (Although the taxes on a hybrid car are significantly lower than on a regular car.)

Age of a car is another area of concern. If you are an Israeli, you can only import a car up to two years old. A returning resident (toshav hozer) can import a car up to four years old. An oleh generally does not have an age restriction on importing a vehicle, but this is worth confirming for your specific model if you want to import an older car.

There are also issues of bringing the vehicle up to Israeli code, but we will save that discussion for another column.

All the best,
Shmuel