I love the idea of electric cars. While Tomorrow's World predictions of all us driving around in one by the beginning of the 21st century have obviously come to naught, it does seem there is real momentum in this market right now. And not before time especially with oil reserves drying up....
Which is why I was excited to hear that that the makers of the wonderfully quirky G-Whizz, Indian firm Reva, unveiled two new electric car models at the Frankfurt Car Show earlier this week. Thankfully both the 4-seat NXR and sporty 2-door NXG look much more substantial than the G-Whizz (that's not saying much - it really is the modern day equivalent of the Citroen 2CV).
Offering a top speed of around 60 miles per hour and 125 miles of driving on a single charge, the NXR and NXG sound great. They look OK too. The only fly in the ointment is that they are likely to cost around 10,000 Euros when they go into production next year.
So what about the other manufacturers? The good news is that many of them now seem to be investing serious money in electric car production. The bad? It looks like several years before some of them really get their acts in gear. At Frankfurt, Volkswagen announced that it's wonderfully named electric car, the E-Up, wouldn't go into production until 2013 and that it won't be until 2020 that production levels match those of popular compact cars.
Meanwhile, Renault unveiled a whole raft of electric concept cars at Frankfurt. "The electric car will account for 10% of the global market in 10 years," Carlos Ghosn, chief executive of alliance partners Renault and Nissan bullishly announced in a BBC interview. "It is time for zero emission motoring," he added. However, before you get too carried away and chuck away the keys to your gas guzzling people carrier, it's worth noting that the four electric cars on show at Frankfurt - including the Twizy ZE and Zoe ZE - were concepts only and look like being years away from production too.
Only the Kangoo ZE Concept Electric Van, due to be adopted by the French post office, looks like going into production next year. It looks like a few more years then before Tomorrow's World predictions of us all driving around in electric cars truly becomes a reality.
Reva don't make the Nano. That's Tata. Do your research.
Sorry you are right Nick. My mistake.
I like the Reva features in all Electric Cars . I it has great feature like a 2+2 seat configuration and torque-heavy three-phase AC induction motor that produces rapid acceleration.