Electric Motoring? Lib Dem Councillor Books Nissan Leaf Test Drive
Following a look at a Nissan Leaf electric car shown at the Tring Eco Fair, held in April, Lib Dem Hertfordshire County Councillor Nick Hollinghurst has decided to investigate electric motoring seriously.
But although you can get charging units fitted to an external wall of your house, it makes more sense to fit one inside your garage. So the big downside for Nick is that, if he decides to go ahead, he will have to clear his garage. Of course this is not really a bad thing. If we all started to use our garages once again, then there'd be more parking space on the roads - not to mention fewer blocked pavements for wheelchairs and mums with buggies.
An electric car is not cheap to buy, but is very cheap to run - 2p per mile - and to have serviced. Nick believes it would be very useful for local trips. The range is about 120 miles, so he could easily get to (say) County Hall in Hertford and back.
There is zero road fund tax to pay (at the moment) and, together with other green incentives, that reduces the cost until to make electric motoring affordable.
But you'll have to be quick if you decide to go ahead - before Osborne and Cameron take the green incentives and the tax benefits away!
And Nick says,
"Just before someone points out to me that electric cars also have carbon footprints, let me say I am aware of that!
The manufacturing footprint is at the moment about 75% more than for the equivalent sized internal combustion car. Where electric cars score is when you start driving them using national grid electricity.
Then - after taking into account the higher manufacturing CO2 and making reasonable assumptions of typical use (lower for electric cars) and vehicle lifetime (lower again for electric cars) - you find that the dominant factor is the "green-ness" or otherwise of the grid electricity production mix. In Australia you might as well drive a petrol car ( grid all coal), but in Sweden or Norway (lots of hydro) then electric is way, way greener.
Here in the UK, using 2009 figures, electric grid charged cars were much the same as hybrid cars. With the improvements since 2009 (e.g. this week solar was 16% of total electricity production) now in 2015 electric cars will be a bit better than hybrid. So I'm thinking of giving it a go."