Are we ready to go electric?
I glide silently and – it has to be said – ever so slightly smugly through London in my Nissan Leaf electric car. Oops, I've strayed into the congestion charge zone, have I remembered to pay? Ha, it doesn't matter, I don't have to. Tax disc? Exempt! I press a button on the dash, a message is displayed: I have saved a total of… 691,229 trees! Single-handedly, just this morning. No wonder I'm feeling pleased with myself. I'm practically God.
I'm also comfortable, safe and not at all embarrassed. The Leaf, unlike some electric vehicles (EVs), is a proper car, with everything you'd expect from a proper car. It even looks quite stylish. I'm cool, I'm green, I'm the future. The Nissan Leaf is absolutely brilliant. Apart from a couple of little things. Like the fact that, for me, it would be little better than useless.
I, like most urbanites (surely the only people to consider an EV, given their limited range), live in a terrace. No off-street parking, in other words. What are we supposed to do, run a lead out of the letter box and across the pavement, tripping up the pedestrians as they pass and being sabotaged by every kid in the neighbourhood?
The alternative is to charge it somewhere else. My screen tells me that the nearest place is 10 miles away at a shopping centre in Watford. But I don't want to go shopping in Watford for four hours while the car charges up. I don't want to go anywhere for four hours.
The infrastructure is getting better, there will be more charging points. But an electric car makes sense only if you can charge it at one of the places you spend a lot of time – ie, home or work. For those of us who can't do either, or who don't want to (or shouldn't) drive to work, it makes little sense.
And £26,000 (even with the government incentive) is a lot to spend on a car that isn't nearly as useful as a car that costs a third of the price. Some people will be able to make the figures work – a lot more of us will have to wait until EVs get better. Not just the infrastructure but the technology, too. I don't really use a car in London, to be honest. I cycle and use public transport. I need one only to go out of town; and a Leaf's 110-mile (tops) range limits my choice of destination.
My test car came from the Nissan depot in Oxfordshire. It would probably have made it under its own steam (so to speak), but that would have left very little in the tank (so to speak) for me which, given my charging issues, would have been problematic. So it arrived on a trailer, towed by a huge gas-guzzling four-wheel drive pick-up truck. There's an irony there somewhere, isn't there?
Nissan Leaf
Price £25,990
Top speed 90mph
Acceleration 0-62mph in 11.9 seconds
Range 110 miles
CO2 emissions 0
Eco rating 9/10
In two words Not yet
--
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/aug/12/nissan-leaf-car-review-wollaston
~
Manage subscription | Powered by rssforward.com
0 comments:
Post a Comment