Electric cars haven’t achieved the sexiest of images thus far in their evolution. There’s been something just too weirdy-beardy and wilfully eccentric about them. The Indian-made (but, surprisingly, US-designed) G-Wiz has been the best example of an apparent determination to be unattractive and unappealing. The G-Wiz is actually rather fun to drive, but, speaking for my gender at least, you wouldn’t want to be seen about in one if you have even a half measure of testosterone.
The hybrid petrol/electric Toyota Prius moves a step closer to combining greenery with aesthetic respectability, but again is ugly and hasn’t changed much since it was launched 12 years ago.
Electric cars, however, are about to become properly cool. The curtain raiser, which will begin appearing on European roads this summer, is the £94,000 Tesla Roadster electric sports car, built partly in California and partly in Norfolk by a company founded by the South African PayPal co-creator and space entrepreneur, Elon Musk. Soon after that will come the Mitsubishi i-MiEV, an electric four seater based on an existing smallish petrol saloon from the Japanese manufacturer. And after that, around New Year, will come the first glimpse of the most serious electric contender yet, another Tesla, this the Model S, a seven-seater that looks like a big Lexus saloon and has a claimed range of 300 miles per 45-minute charge for a slightly less breathtaking price of just under $50,000.
I was lucky enough to have a weekend test driving the current Tesla (teslamotors.com) and can report that electric motoring’s hairshirt-wholemeal-spinach days really do seem to be on the way out. The Roadster is a real mean machine, a sleek, low riding carbon fibre body with two comfortable seats, precise sports car handling and a kick which humbles any Ferrari or Porsche on the market. The Roadster accelerates from 0-60 mph in 3.9 seconds, can reach 125 and if you drive it gently (although it would be a bit odd to do so) will manage 200 miles for the price of a 16-hour charge.
You need to be pretty committed (the £94k aside) to run a Tesla Roadster because it’s a faff to keep charged up and life becomes dominated by thinking about your remaining battery life and squeezing every available mile from it by turning off unnecessary accessories as you’re roaring (silently) along. It’s also undeniable that the car isn’t overwhelmingly practical in other ways; it has, for example, almost no space in the boot thanks to the half a tonne of laptop batteries which fill it.
The payback is the most enjoyable experience you are ever likely to have on modern roads. The whirring electric sound of electricity powering the car along is not unlike a Tube train but sounds exciting and futuristic. The mind-blowing acceleration means you can burn off every other car on the road yet retain the smug feeling that you are doing so without harming the environment more than a mere smidgen — and not even that if you are punctilious enough to charge your Tesla from renewable sources.
To regard the Roadster as a serious method of transport is missing the point slightly; it’s a statement car that happens to provide a continual and unfading if inconvenient joy you can only appreciate fully by experiencing it.
Where it all leads is another matter entirely. Electric vehicles could yet be a blind alley — there’s good money on hydrogen power being the real future. Honda already has a hydrogen-powered car for sale in the States and other carmakers are on the case. There’s also an argument that four-wheel eco-friendly transport of any kind is self defeating because it ends with city streets gridlocked by guilt-free drivers taking advantage of the virtually free power and breaks on road tax, parking and so on. Two wheel electric vehicles — cycles, scooters and motorbikes — have taken China (where they mostly come from) by storm and could yet, I believe, become a major force in the West.
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