High hopes for green motoring as UK's first mass-produced electric vehicle hits dealerships
• Testdriving the Nissan Leaf
Their sometimes clunky designs, short range between recharges and super-car price tags have put many drivers off buying an electric auto. But that could soon change with the launch of the UK's first mass-produced electric vehicle.
The Nissan Leaf, an all-electric family auto with the performance of a Ford Focus but a fraction of the greenhouse gas emissions, is delivered to UK dealerships today.
More than 600 fans of greener driving have been waiting since last September to get their hands on the Leaf, one of only a handful of electric vehicles available in the UK.
Mark Goodier, the Smooth Radio DJ, is one of the first. "The great thing about electric autos is that the fuel distribution is already in place," he said. "We all have mains electricity at home. We have it at work and councils are already working on how to install thousands of charging points at the roadside. You can see why electric vehicles make such sense, particularly in towns and cities."
At £30,990, the Leaf is at the expensive end of the family auto budget, but drivers can claim a £5,000 government grant towards the cost. They are also exempt from road tax and congestion charges, and if it is used as a company auto, it is not taxed as a benefit-in-kind and the employer pays no national insurance contributions on it.
A full charge will last for about 110 miles, Nissan calculates, and cost about £2 in electricity. That compares with about £12 for 110 miles for a petrol-driven auto of a similar size. Even with George Osborne's budget give-away to "Ford Focus families", in the form of a 1p cut to fuel duty announced on Wednesday, switching to an electric auto is likely to save the average driver more than £1,500 a year.
Ministers are hoping that the wider availability of electric autos will help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from transport, which will be essential to meeting climate change targets. They also hope to spark investment in a new manufacturing industry. While the Leafs being driven out of dealerships this week were built in Japan, from 2013 they will be built at the Nissan plant in Sunderland.
Other electric autos available in the UK include the Mitsubishi i-MiEV, the Smart Fortwo electric drive, the Peugeot iOn and Citroen C-Zero, but some are limited to leasing deals at present. More are scheduled to follow, including the Chevrolet Volt and Tata Vista.
But the electric "revolution" in driving has got off to a slow start. Only 55 electric autos were sold in the UK in 2009, though that was before the government's new grants took effect. The government's climate advisers, the Committee on Climate Change, says the country needs 1.7m of them on the roads by 2020 to help meet the country's tough autobon targets.
This year is not likely to prove a breakthrough, despite the new autos reaching garages, according to Andrew Close, European manager for powertrain forecasts at IHS Global Insight. "It might be the first year people notice electric autos driving around – normal people rather than G-Wiz owners," he said.
"But 2011 will not see any breakthrough in volume [of autos on the road], though it will be a considerable jump from before. 2011 is way too early, £5,000 or not – the vehicles are expensive, constrained in supply and there are still too many good [conventional auto] alternatives."
Fans of greener autos are happy with their expanded choice, though. Richard Todd, a silicon chip designer from St Albans, used to drive a Toyota Prius, a hybrid half-electric and half-petrol auto. "As an engineer I have always wanted an electric auto – I've just had to wait for the battery technology to arrive," he said. "Hybrids are good but the driving experience of an all-electric vehicle is way beyond this."
A comprehensive charging network is currently under development in the UK, and Nissan's network of EV dealers – currently 26 sites nationwide – will be equipped with a quick charger, which will charge the battery from zero to 80% capacity in under 30 minutes. Across the UK there are programmes under way to install around 9,000 charge points by 2013.
Share
No comments:
Post a Comment