Brits ‘want electric cars’
Almost 34 million motorists would consider buying an electric car in the next five years, a new survey has revealed.
A poll carried out on behalf of the RAC Foundation found that 6.75 million motorists are thinking of going green.
The government recently announced plans to launch an incentive scheme, offering grants of up to £5,000 to those buying electric cars from 2011.
However, the RAC warned that "by the government’s own reckoning", electric vehicles will not be available on the mass market until 2017.
"What the government is in danger of doing is putting the cart before the horse.
It is actively promoting the purchase of electric vehicles long before there is any chance of manufacturers making them widely available," he added.
In other green driving news, car manufacturer Fiat recently was honoured with an award for its eco:Drive in-car fuel monitoring system.
The tool helps drivers to monitor their fuel consumption and reduce CO2 emissions.
Hi
I tried to subscribe to your RSS using FeedDemon but the following error occurs: unexpected T_STRING on line 26, I don’t think I am doing anything wrong, does anyone have any idea how to correct this, thanks.
I just downloaded FeedDemon and it all went through fine, i also have it working ok on Google Reader. You need to add the subscription with the URL http://www.autobulbsdirect.co.uk/blog/feed/
Problem with electric cars that most people miss is the fact they have very limited range and need a lot of charging when not in use.
Limited range – fine if you live and work in a city or town and do short runs to work etc. You can charge when you get back home or if you have access to public charging point you will probably have a pay meter at some point in the future – electricity has to be paid for and will go up in price faster than standard car fuel as demand increases.
Charging – well it should be obvious that the electricity has to come from somewhere, this means generating it – with me so far? OK, now consider the power stations and what the run on to produce the electricity, yup you may have gathered that it means burning fuel. You get nothing for free, energy is produced in one form or another from using energy i.e. you are converting fossil fuel to electricity, Gas and coal are fossil fuels. You may think wind turbines are the answer – great idea, but they don’t work on a still day, nor do they work if it’s too windy. The result is that no matter how you look at electric cars as being “green”, the CO2 will still be produced somewhere in order to run them so you are effectively gaining nothing.
Batteries – well I shan’t go into the production of these items or the disposal of them when they are at the end of their service life, but that is far more polluting than you may think.
Ideally we need tidal power stations and being an island we are in an ideal position to take advantage of this, but….. No government will want to invest in this, they would rather just tax us all as much as possible on what we have to use at present – if they used even half of the 80% tax on car fuel for investment in alternative technology, it could be a step in the right direction.
The ultimate fuel for all transport is hydrogen, they have produced a car in the USA that runs on it and it creates zero CO2 output and performs as well as normal fuel driven vehicles. No doubt when the cars are all producing zero emissions our governments will think of another reason to tax us, but perhaps it will be a more honest tax – a general mobility tax……..