2008 – the Year of the Electric Car?

Sorry but we need to think of the future for our kids and their kids. Now I love my car and it I love pushing, but that pushes the MPG down to about 12-8! I would love an EV!

Burning stuff won't get us anywhere and will just ignite more "wars on terror"

We need to be thinking beyond electric transport. What happens when all these batteries need replacing, are we going to end up with a battery mountain just like the fridges!!No doubt we'll be taxed for disposal.

Let's be honest. We'll keep complaining and we'll keep paying for petrol/diesel whatever the cost. After all, we're British!

I'm not going to chage to electric anytime soon and no doubt most other will not also.

It's about time that someone in government said, "we will eliminate our need for fossil fuels by the end of the next decade" in the same way Kennedy said theid have someone on the moon by the end of the decade. Action is required NOW otherwise we'll be sitting here in 10 years still complaining.

Can someone tell me what the effects of the Hydrogen ,the batteries give off
to the climate change. If the Hydrogen has the same effect on the enviroment as the emissions frompower stations, and car exausts whats the point of changing

i've already bought an electric scooter. no tax, no mot and cheap insurance. 30 miles on a charge, which is fine for me. electric car would be the next step. bring it on.

maybe we should take a stand against these fuel prices, if you change to electric or any other fuel do we honestly think this government would not tax us as they already do,NO!!! we should stop it now, I for one would back someone to the hilt!!

Electrically powered cars are finally coming of age. The bigger question is where do we get the electricity from? Its seems to me that the only clean, zero carbon way of producing that electricity is nuclear power. The alternatives are not realistic; the whole country covered in wind turbines and wave powered generators begs the question, what are we saving the environment for? If the power station burns fossil fuel, we're merely transferring the point of polution. Its time we moved past the Chernobyl disaster and faced the technological challenges that safe, clean nuclear power presents. We can then look forward to cheaper, secure energy and almost eradicate carbon emissions at the same time.

Helen Fletcher: What you propose is impossible. It would be a perpetual energy device, in other words, like having a light that powers itself with a solar panel. Thermodynamics: There ain't no such thing as a free lunch, and charging an electric car is nothing like the battery being charged in an internal combustion engined car via alternator.

In any case, someone stated 50 years for such cars to be adopted. There won't _be_ cars in 50 years. The collapse caused by energy prices and then their decline in production will end industrial civilisation based on fossil fuels. Even if the frankly doubtful can be done, and we replace all fossil fuels with renewables and nuclear in that time globally and without hiccups, it won't mean happy motoring carries on. These are the death throes of such rampant motoring we are seeing. Petrol, diesel, electric, air or flywheel, all these options are useless without the industry behind them. And the industry sure can't grow or even continue to exist with the end of fossil fuels.

And even if we could all have electric cars and the peaking problems approaching had no effect, the eventual problem of 9 billion people all wanting to drive their own cars will bring a chaos all of its own. Just look at Tata's Nano unveiled this week for the billion Indians to enjoy. Now imagine every developing nation getting those things, however small and economical, for their citizens.

Nothing to do with electric cars, but if we were all to boycott the two largest suppliers of petrol and diesel, because it is they who set the prices we pay, and get all our colleagues to do the same, then they would be forced to lower their prices and the others would have to follow suit. So get busy with those emails!

"Slash your fuel costs" yes by all means, the environment? stuff the environment, there making a mountain out of a mole hill!!

Think is, OK the range has increased a bit (250 miles) but this isn't exactly far so they are still commuter cars really. How long do they take to charge up ?

As someone already pointed out, where would the electricity come from - our existing oil and coal fired stations? No benefit (probably worse off) environmentally. The greens don't like Fission nuclear, public don't like wind farms (after years of getting rid of pylons and putting cables underground who can blame them) so wheres it going to come from. Fusion was also mentioned - cleaner yes but technology? Cost? Long way off.

Whatever is done won't make much difference as glabal warming is a natural event anyway. Mankind likes to think he's in control but nature still rules!!

Since when did Henry Ford invent the petrol car?

Why should people who have spent £££ on their cars be forced to change models?...
Its about time someone developed engines for the older cars, that were greener, thus, cutting down on waste... too many things are throw away nowadays, cars becoming one of them.
I love my car and have made many modifications, just wish someone could produce new cleaner engines for our older cars.

I personally dont see how battery cars would be any better.. power grid glitches every now and again when under high demand... God help it with millions of cars being charged up. And for sure as stated before , the UK.Gov will make us pay just as much for it sooner or later...

I am a firm believer of 1 house... 1 car and drivers over 60 having to resit a driving test. That would go some small way at cutting down on polution, cars on the road etc.

Whatever will be will be, I will personally drive my car until it dies...no matter what the government says or does.

I HAVE TO ADMIT A CLEAN ELECTRIC CAR WOULD BE GREAT BUT THE COST OF THE POWER IS FAR IN EXCESS OF PETROL,AND THAT IS WITHOUT THE GOV, ADDING ON THEIR SHARE,

The National grid in the UK can only just keep up with current power output, and there is a HUGE energy gap forecast for circa 2012, based purely on extrapolating our current domestic and industrial consumption. It would be completely impossible to service the needs of even a fraction of even the current vehicle parc if they were electric rather than fossil-fuel-powered vehicles. It would be possible to service the needs of electric vehicles if we put the necessary nuclear infrastructure in place (renewables wouldn't have a prayer of servicing the need), but - this is important - WE HAVE TO PUT THE INFRASTRUCTURE IN PLACE BEFORE THE CHANGEOVER TAKES PLACE, OTHERWISE THE LIGHTS WILL GO OUT!!! The changeover to nuclear will take around 30 years, so yes - electric cars will indeed be viable. In 2040.

Electric cars... Sounds great... BUT, at what price. (a) for the car? (b) for the ever increasing electric bills???

Dont forget the TAX...

I would love to have an electic car or any other car fueled cheaply. Unfortunately what ever fuel becomes the front runner the Goverment will tax it accordingly

I think that electric cars are ideal for local running but due to recharge time make them unusable for distance

There is also the new GM electric car.
It will use a small (1 litre or smaller engine) to charge the battery. The battery will then power the electric motor. It can then get 60mpg - but also be a plug-in. Therefore, you can charge it from home - or if you don't, it'll be just a plug-in hybrid. But if your commute is less than 40miles (the range of the electic battery) then you will NEVER need to buy any petrol to power it.
This sounds a good solution... ie. people can still do the trip across country to their relatives - but also get the electric powered commute.

Also - the new "super" batteries used in the Lightning, the GM car, etc are Lithium Iron Phosphate and are 100% safe. They do not explode when over-heated / short-circuited / shot like standard mobile / laptop batteries. Search for Valence Technology/a123 systems/nano phosphate - all 3 companies are pioneering these batteries.
They can also cycle for over 2000 cycles to 90% charge - ie. 2000x50miles = 100,000miles!!!

Cars have 4 wheels, so why can't someone come up with a solution to the charging battery problem, by getting the four wheels to charge / top up the battery as the car is being driven along, therefore reducing the need to 'plug in' the car to charge the battery, but hey I'm only a woman, surely there is someone out there with the know how, and the get up an go, to get out there and invent something :-)

Ultimately an electric vehicle is only as green as the electricity it consumes.

If you buy green tariff electricity like me then you can run an EV with a close to zero carbon footprint.

At the moment green electricity only makes up about 4% of all UK electricity supplied. To increase that level, demand needs to be higher so that more investment is made into it.

So the first step is easy. Change to green electricity at your house.

I thought Britain was the home of the worlds motoring heritage. If so, why should we give up on fuel when it can be so much cheaper if the government didn't take such a big cut of it. As for electric? No way would I buy one. I like my classic cars. Cheap to insure, relatively economical - ish and free road tax, and a whole load more fun than any new car, petrol or electric!

I am happy with the basic principal of reducing harmful emmissions, but it seems to me that going electric is only transfering the problem from the vehicle user to the energy provider. In terms of energy it is a well known scientific fact that you don't get something for nothing therefore most forms of motive power are inefficient to varying degrees. All for the current viable forms of powering a motor vehicle have little to choose in terms of their carbon footprint, after all this is what it is all about.

I read a very interesting artical which appeared in a number of trustworthy publications. This was a study which had been conducted to assess the carbon footprint, from manufacture to scraping, of many of the popular cars, 4x4s and hybrid vehicles currently available. The results indicated that the vehicle with the largest carbon footprint was a hybrid vehicle with the lowest emmissions, and the one with the smallest footprint was a 'gas guzzling' 4x4. Now why does it not surprise me that this study has not been given equal air time to that of the 'ban the car' lobby.

It's time for some of the surpressed designs of motive power to be dug from the vaults of the oil companies where they have been gathering dust for years.

Yes this has got to happen . I run a number of cars including a very quick Merc but I just love driving [ AND PARKING ] my Smart Car .
65mpg and £35 road tax . We need to end the bullshit and just cut our rediculous fuel consumption which is in anycase promoted by the oil companies. I would just love to give OPEC a headache , they really deserve it . By reducing consumption we will of course reduce the supply cost of petrol because our oil producing friends will need to maintain cash flow to fund their lifestyles.

charge these cars with free electricity, from solar panels on the house/garage roof.......any surplus sell back to the grid.......

COME ON ....WAKE UP GOVERNMENT,,,,,,,,More grants for solar!

60 million people, x 1000watts. each ..= .........errr......well a lot of electric!
check out youtube........"what are we waiting for" video

regards Brimoy

I work in the automotive industry and I know that a lot of research is currently going in to greener engines. Cars manufactured in the UK are improving in quality, emissions, consumption, style every day and I say be patient. Only things certain in life are death and taxes, so we might as well accept that, but back our British manufacturers and "cheaper" cars are on the way by 2010.

Electric cars may be cheaper to run, but they still have a huge environmental impact plus they are not good for long range driving.

It obviously takes some sort of energy to generate the electricity in the first place to recharge the car, excluding hybrid models that energy would be fossil fuels, nuclear or hydro all of which have an impact on the environment in one way or another.

If more people start using electric cars then the revenue from petrol and diesel fuels will drop and as soon as the government catch on to the fact they are loosing money, they will come up with some sort of electric car charging tax or increase the tax on petrol and diesel fuels or invent a new tax to compensate.

Also it should be thought about recycling at the end of the electric car’s lifespan, there are different components required with a lot of mixed metals plus more lead required for the batteries, where will it end up?

The government want us to go green, but at the same time the public transport options are not improving and what transport is available is too expensive anyway.

Transport taxes such as motorway tax and congestion charges are fine if the money goes back into improving the roads but it won’t all go back, it will end up be diverted elsewhere.

It all comes down to the fact that the people in the government who are making decisions have no idea what happens in the real world and quite frankly are idiots.

It’s about time that the government and councils of the UK are held accountable for all money wasted in schemes that never quite worked out.

Whilst I understand that electric propulsion is a viable means of personal transport, I would like of see the development of an electric powerplant that would be a swap in unit for the existing engine in todays vehicles.

The cost implications of having to replace all the vehicles (over time) is incalculable and for many will be unfeasible.

I do hear the concerns of some that electric vehicles do not alleviate the pollution problems, but surely a well maintained, modern, efficient power station (which we need for other energy requirements) is a better solution than having millions of cars, in various states of tune and condition creating the pollution.

just my two cents.

The theories good- BUT as a previous poster points out environmentalists won't be happy if more fuel burning or nuclear power stations have to built to provide the power surge.

The best solution is to reduce commuting need by a providing jobs close to available workforce, providing affordable home close to jobs (especially in places like London, Edinburgh, Devon & Cornwall) and improving access to public transport and alternative options car pooling, company shuttle, school buses for people to curb the need for car use. We also should be increasing penalties on lazy car use (under half a mile) by changing the taxation system by scrapping road tax and replacing it with fuel tax- so pay and go principles apply and motorway, major route tolls (extra vignette like Austria, Switzerland etc) or toll gates (like France, Spain)

If electric cars are to be taken seriously they need to be usable and viable outside of cites and stylish/practical enough for everyday use- noddy cars like the G-Wizz etc just don't work.

It does nt matter what fuel your vehicle runs on. The parasites that we call the government will have their snouts in the trough when it comes to duty on whatever fuel your vehicle runs on whether its bull**** electric gas petrol water or diesel. the biggest problem we have is too many vehicles and people using vehicles inappropriately like taking kids to school in a 4 wheel drive when the school is only 200 yards from their doors . People do not want to get off their often fat backsides and walk more than 5 yards. People pay lip service to environmental issues except when it applies to them. This smacks of hypocrisy of which we are all guilty. Unless peoples attitudes change very quickly sooner rather than later, we will not be posting our views on this or any other forum in this very sad and sorry world

Electric cars have a fundamental number of problems:
- batteries and their life cycle
- autonomy
- performance
-... and cost of energy - yeap, electricity isn't for free!

A credible and real alternative is still to be revealed. Something around hydrogen, but don't know how.

In the mean time:
- use motorbikes and bikes
- create a proper good telework legislation and force it please
- improve public transportation and lower the prices

Cheers

i would buy one,why can't these cars be charged by solar panels during the day and small wind turbines at night,surely with the know how these days,possibly giros fitted to each wheel giving instant charge ,the know how probably is there for these cars to run constant but does big brother want us to have them-big money lost if we all drove electric cars,might stop alot of the wars in the middle east though

It will not matter one jot, electric, fossil fuel vegetable oil whatever you run your vehicle on the government will find some way of taxing it, just look at the price of LPG compared to what the price was when it was first introduced.

Unfortunately, electric cars, hydrogen power, LPG etc might be the answer to a cleaner sustainable future, but it will have zero effect on fuel prices. I'm sure you appreciate that if the government suddenly start losing billions in petrol & diesel revenue, the alternative fuels will get hit with similar duties to make up the shortfall. I'm afraid the poor old motorist is going to be a soft easy target for a long time to come. Simarlarly with Road Tax, once people have switched to low emission vehicles, the government will ditch road tax and impose road tolls. The end result is we will all pay more for driving low emission vehicles than we currently do driving gas guzzlers.
My own view is that if everyone swapped their gas guzzler for an electric car tomorrow, it would have about as much effect on global warming as a gnat pi**ing in the Thames has on rising sea levels.
Don't give up the petrol campaign!!

What about the new air cars that are due to be built and released shortly? There was an article about them in Readers Digest this month. The web site is theaircar.com

I am interested in buying one of these electric cars. when the range increases to 120 miles and the battery really does last for 150,000 miles it will be just the job. I have just retired so in 10 years I will be on my uppers as the cost of living rockets ahead of my pension. I tried four times to register an interest but it didn't work. Has anybody else found this? Maybe because I didn't have a works number it recognised that I was a poor old pensioner who wouldn't be able to afford it.

probally not the place, but i am just back from gibraltar, diesel 54.8 pence per litre

The electric car is good in theory. However, as mentioned, manufacture of the batteries is hardly the most environmentally friendly industrial process. I reckon keeping my old 9 year old petrol car going is better than scrapping it and buying something new running on huge batteries.

Lets look at the practicalities. I don't have a garage and rarely get a parking space right outside my door, so running a cable from the mains is an impracticality (as is the fact that the bloody kids round this area would probably muck about with it, or someone would trip over it and sue you - even running a vacuum out is impossible).

The power stations in this corner of the world are exclusively coal fired, which isn't that environmentally friendly.

As well as earlier mentioned, ipods, laptops, digital cameras etc. batteries degrade during use and have a limited life span. Disposing of these is also quite intensive, and expensive to replace.

The range isn't there either. I could theoretically take my petrol car tonight and drive to Moscow, Monaco or Africa, filling up along the way. An electric car would require charging every 300 miles or so for a few hours, hardly practical for those who do high mileages.

The technology just isn't there yet. Would put my backing behind hydrogen power, or even perhaps controlled fusion, both of which I believe could be a viable option by now if it weren't for pressure from the powerful oil companies. Remember the atomic age, Ford I believe had a prototype of a nuclear powered car. Wouldn't fancy getting involved in a crash with that.

I would certainly buy an electric car if there was a viable one available. The EV1, the electric RAV4, and the electric 206 could have all been viable if the manufacturers had supported them better. The G-Wiz is a joke and seems to be the only widely available affordable EV in the UK just now - so I am still waiting.

There is one more car that the blog missed, http://www.chevrolet.com/electriccar/ which looks very exciting. Unfortunately this is still a concept, but eventually something decent will make it to market.

One of the best cars I saw in 2007 was a Hummer H1 the original beastie that takes up more than it's fair share of the road! It had the engine removed and replaced with a 300HP fuel cell. The company that built it, then drove it around the City of London (and Red Ken's parish) - but as it is fuel cell powered there was no congestion charge! Brilliant

The likely hood of these cars becoming widespread is probable in Fifty years time.
My experience of thirty years plus in the motor trade tells me that the basic motorist will forget to charge the car, not bother to get the thing serviced and go completely bananas when they get the bill.
Further more with the political scene as it is you will have to take it to a garage (main dealer) and pay through the nose for their "qualified licensed technician" to work on it. these are far more technical than a milk float.
You will be ripped off as the parking for electric cars only bay has a charging point which like a credit card petrol pump, you insert your card remove it and then when you leave the bay the loop on the bay works out your charge. That is if you have removed the charge lead first. your electricity used will be much more than at home. Unless they will provide a subsidy for your enviromentally friendly vehicle.

The science element of solar energy made a huge advance with the developement of the 'solar turbine' a series of mirrors focused on an electric generator mounted in a specially developed fluid that heats and rapidly rotates a generator. Two of these devices about the size of a couple of double decker buses stood side by side mounted together can generate enough electric energy to support a small town.

Obviously their operation depends very much on sun light, which seems to be quite plentiful in desert areas of the planet.

Perhaps thats why the british are becoming quite so interested in africa lately.

We're bored with the middle east, they haven't got much oil left ...but lets still all the sunlight the africans have got.

There are many people who would welcome an electric powered car I'm one of them.

I've even considered purchasing an old milk float, mounting a five foot wind turbine on my garage roof and offsetting some of the cost that way.

Fair enough the wind doesn't blow all the time, but having two sets of batteries, would mean one set were always on charge when the wind was blowing, even if one set were hard mounted in the garage to operate as a capacitor to replenish the vehicle from stored charge.

The remaining charge would have to come from the national grid and I wouldn't be paying fuel duty so I very much doubt we'll be allowed to go ahead with these cars all the time the current administration is still paying for illegal wars and need our money so baddly.

With Npower hiking its prices by 27%, the cost of running this car has theoretically increased by 27% even before it is launched. So no difference between the price increases on diesel then!!!.

How exactly is this "alternative" power?, most of the production of the UK's electricity is done via burning fossil fuels and if the masses did switch over to the Battery powered vehicles then how is this going to effect the output from power stations and of course the capacity of the national grid? with many millions of battery chargers all being plugged in at around the same time.

There are usually dire predictions during cold winters where the utility companies are predicting gloom and doom in relation to not having enough capacity to cope with increased demand, so how is this going to effect running your new battery powered car?

I've also yet to see a commercially available battery which can fully charge in the time it takes to fill a standard car with fuel, so i'm not sure how 'charging' stations on supermarkets and motorways are going to work. Yes, 'fast' charging does exist but it usually comes at a cost of battery life, and in much smaller capacities than those which would be required to run a battery powered vehicle.

Cost of replacement batteries would also be a factor, a friends father has just replaced a battery on his milk float....at a cost of £2500

Hmmmmm

I wouldn`t mind an electric car but it is up for a huge battle. I get a range of arround 700 miles on a 60 litre tank diesel megane. to swap that for a 250 mile electric car is going to take a lot of convincing. Maybe if it costs half of what todays cars cost.

I have a little worry though. Looking at other rechargable items such as mobile phones or cameras. The older they get the shorter the battery life seems to become. Would that be the same with an electric car? I wonder how it could be avoided.

I'm actually in the process of developing a number of electric cars so I'm pleased to hear that many of you would consider buying one. :o)

EVs were doable in the mid-nineties, the EV1 from the States would have been a great commuter vehicle, had GM not killed its own baby. Back then, fuel costs were cheap, very cheap. So who wanted a green mobile? Sure, it was cheaper, but people would see you as a silly hippy.

Now, it's not so silly. Two-hundred miles range is more than enough for the majority of commuters, and with modern lithium based power cells and the possibility of hybrid Plug-In Electric Vehicles (PHEV) that have a very efficient diesel to complement the electric motors for longer duration driving, it's even more sensible.

Of course, as another poster mentioned, right now even the Prius, fondly admired by environmentalist groups, isn't that green. The batteries are resource hogs to make and dangerous to dispose of. The thing is still made with fossil fuels, so while it is more efficient, it can't be considered truly green or non-FF dependent. Even if we had the money and resources and time to all get EVs (and leave only HGVs with efficient diesels or turbines running what bio-fuels we can muster without starving), the problem is that we don't have the base load power capacity in the UK, and neither do many nations. We rely a lot on natural gas which is also peaking just after oil (the npower price rises being a good early warning). Even with the newly announced nuclear plants, a thankful addition to our grid, they'll only be making up for other stations being decommisioned before 2015.

I fear we don't have the time to pull off such a project, for oil is already peaking. We don't have the money, because to replace the majority of cars in the developed world with EVs is easily tens of trillions of dollars, ignoring the current financial collapse we face to boot. We don't really have the energy either.

Unfortunately, this is a time of converging crises. Peak Oil is one of them. Were it not a problem that oil was running out, the other economic and resource based peaks will make it just as tough along with climate change which is really the only reason many want an EV or hybrid right now. When they see the energy crisis loom right here, right now, then climate change will be the last reason they want change.

Sure the emissions are moved from the exhaust pipe to the power station chimney but is is far easier to clean / control the emissions from a single source than from 1,000,000 exhaust pipes.

Anyone with a genuine interest in electric vehicles should visit the Battery Vehicle Society at :-

http://www.batteryvehiclesociety.org.uk/wordpress/

Don`t you mean would????

What`s the point? Environmentalists wouldn`t want a nuclear power station so we wouldn`t end up paying duty and VAT on electricity.