By Michael Hanlon
London Daily Mail   

(June 2010) Electric cars are the future we are told. Don’t believe a word of it. Here’s why. Firstly, I have driven several electric cars and they have all, every single one of them, been rubbish. Slow, heavy, expensive, complex, impractical and ponderous they simply do not do what cars do, which is to transport you and your chattels with the minimum of fuss wherever and whenever you want to go.

Secondly, they do not do what they say on the tin. On its website, Nissan UK describes the new Leaf, which goes on sale next year, as "zero emissions." It is not. If it is worth saying once it is worth saying a million times, if you live in a country (like the UK) where most electricity is generated using fossil fuels, then every time you plug in your electric car to recharge you will be generating emissions — at the power station rather than at the exhaust pipe.

But the main problem with electric cars is the range. A hundred miles at best, usually far less. The godawful G-Wiz  I borrowed once had barely enough juice to get me home, just a few miles across central London.

The Leaf may get you 100 miles, but then what? A wait of several hours while the batteries recharge. So you cannot use an electric car as a car at all. It is a replacement not for your petrol- or diesel-powered conventional motor, but for your bicycle or the bus. That is hardly very green.

Again: electric cars are heavy, expensive, slow and totally impractical, just as they were 120 years ago when they lost the battle against fossil fuels to

1900 Riker Electric

power the 20th Century. The "energy-density" of even the best batteries is an order of magnitude less than of petrol or diesel. That can be improved upon, but at some stage the laws of physics take over.

So what IS the future of motoring? Take your pick, but to my mind the most coherent view is that of Gordon Murray, whose featherlight, brilliant, T25 is nearing the production stage. Probably the most talented automotive engineer alive, Murray says the key is weight. Cars have been getting fatter and heavier over the last 20 years, to the point when even a modest hatchback can weigh-in at close on one and three-quarter tons.

Ridiculous. It is this obesity, combined with (ironically) the fight to reduce pollution, which has meant that in terms of improving economy car makers are running fast and standing still. By making engines "cleaner" (in terms of particulates and other noxious exhaust products) we have made them less efficient, increasing CO2 emissions. That is why today’s cars are not much more economical than they were in the 1980s.

Because of this, car makers are desperate for something new. Hybrid power. Hydrogen power. Electric power. Combinations of the above. All nonsense says Murray. Gasoline and diesel engines still have great potential to be made even more economical than they are today. Make cars as light as they were in the 1960s and we could see truly spectacular improvements in economy.

My guess is that in 2050 we will be driving round in (mostly) sub-one-litre petrol-powered vehicles weighing half a ton and achieving 130 mpg-plus. That is four times better than today, which means that even if petrol is four times as expensive (and that means £22 a gallon) we can keep on driving. And not a plug in sight.