Are electric cars the future?

Robert Lea, Times Online 18 Mar 10;

It is the next big bet of the motor industry.

Nissan's commitment to producing an all-electric family car - and from 2013 manufacturing it in Britain - shows that electric is firmly the future of motoring. But only part of the future.

The Nissan Leaf, initially produced in Japan, is expected to hit British showrooms next March.

That is expected to be three months or so later than the first mass-produced electric cars arrive on UK forecourts: the Peugeot iOn and the Citroen C-Zero which are expected to go on sale by December at the latest.

What makes the Leaf different - apart from the fact that it will be partly British - is the volume that Nissan expects to produce, and the size of the car.

The Peugeot and Citroen models - essentially identical cars as they have the same French owner - are very much pitched at being a small runaround for the city. The Leaf is aiming at the small family market.

And while PSA - Peugeot and Citroen's owner - says it will look at producing around 15,000 vehicles a year initially, Nissan is aiming at many as 60,000 units a year by 2012.

When Nissan's Sunderland factory starts firing up in three years time, 50,000 Leafs a year could be British built.

But will all-electric be the winning new car technology of the future?

Enough of the world's major car manufacturers are pouring investment into hybrid technology to suggest an interesting battle during the next ten years.

Despite its recent problems, Toyota has proved with the Prius that petrol-electric is a flexible option that may attract far more of the market.

All electric cars have a range of up to 100 miles. Hybrids can run on electric in town and then get on the motorway to Scotland with a full tank of petrol. General Motors is also going down the hybrid rather than the all-electric route.

If green is the issue for many consumers, somes manufacturers argue that neither all-electric nor hybrid is actually the answer.

The nirvana for smaller cars is to market them with carbon dioxide emissions of less than 100g/km. Some carmakers argue that there are still so many efficiencies to be found in the production of the combustion engine and the design of cars that conventional diesel or petrol-fed cars could in the future be easily marketed as environmentally-friendly.

And will consumers wear the cost of all-electric?.

Industry estimates suggest that an all-electric car with its expensive lithium-ion battery will cost up £25,000 even after Government incentive subsidies of £5000.

The manufacturers say the cars would effectively retail at the equivalent of the customer paying £500 a month - not so different to the running costs of a conventional motor when you factor in the cost of fuel, vehicle taxation and other expenses.

But then there is the problem of how you "fill up" your electric car. Easy if you pop it on the charger in your own garage. But these electric cars will initially be targeted at city dwellers which generally do not have such a luxury.

What will be needed and what is envisaged is electric connection points on the corner of streets, or in car parks or at supermarkets. None of this infrastructure currently exists and it will need the political will and investment to make it happen.

Ultimately, reality dictates that there will need to be a mix of car technologies in the future.

It is a plain fact that if in 20 years we are all running around in all-electric cars, then we simply will not be able to produce enough electricity to power the cars.

We would have to build many, many more power stations and probably have to start burning more coal in power generators to feed the demand for all this electricity. How green would your green car be then?

The future of motoring is all-electric. And it is hybrid, And until the world's oil reserves run out some time at the end of the century, it will also be conventional, albeit cleaner, petrol and diesel.

The fun (and the pain) for the motor industry in the coming decade is the question of which particular technologies prove most popular.