News that there will be more recharging points dotted around London in the expectation of a boom in electric cars is, in theory, welcome. For once, a government or council is partly financing our fuel rather than taxing it. I just wish there was an electric car currently worth buying.
The current top-selling UK electric vehicle, the G-Wiz, is of course an appalling contraption. If you want to see what happens to one in accident, a quick Google will reveal the awful truth.
Yet it gets regular plugs from certain magazines and newspapers that should know better. In some cases, these are the same ‘voice of the people’ organs that urged safer cars when this was a cause célèbre a decade or two back. Just as hypocritically, politicians who insist on tough crash testing for ‘conventional cars’ now encourage – through various tax benefits – the use of vehicles that circumvent these regulations by being quaintly classified as ‘quadricycles’.
Safety is now not fashionable or a vote winner. Being green is.
Well-engineered electric vehicles that meet modern safety standards are on their way: Smart, Renault and BMW are leading the charge. Sales should start in about 2010.
Until then, if you want to go green in town, there are two much better alternatives: a bicycle or an Oyster card