Quote Originally Posted by montesquieu View Post
Electric cars are a dead end. In a few years it'll be all plug in hybrids with much smaller batteries and hydrogen fuel cells to enable decent range. Tesla etc are playing games with people's money as well as taking them for a mug.

Right now small petrol is the way to go. Who on earth wants a car with an effective range of 100 miles? And what happens if you get caught in a big traffic jam, at night, in the dark, in your jazzed up milk float?
I think you're wrong. The latest plug in small pure electrics can go 150 miles without too many problems, but I agree that's not enough for really long journeys. I'm not sure what the range is on the Teslas. Even the manufacturers (e.g Renault - Zoe) say that a few years ago the range was under 100 miles, and one vehicle a few years old which I heard of recently has now only a range of about 20 miles - though it's still in use for delivery purposes.

I just spoke to a friend of mine today, and he says that his daughter has a plug in hybrid, and she never fills it up with petrol. Journeys probably a max of 60 miles a day - but I'm not sure. That's 30 miles to work, and 30 miles back. Obviously for longer journeys the petrol engine would kick in. I wasn't sure if that's how the hybrid petrol/electrics would work. Perhaps if they only run on electricity, then on the day when the petrol engine is needed to go further - that'll be when one discovers the plugs are fouled up or corroded, and the engine doesn't go any more. Surely there should be a way of forcing these cars to either work totally on petrol, or not - though having written that there was a report some while ago about many users of hybrids (work users, who didn't know) running them only on petrol - thus totally ruining the benefits of hybrid cars - as for various reasons running a plug-in hybrid only on the petrol engine is (apparently) less efficient that just having a petrol engine.

The other thing about some electric cars which might suit Jeremy Clarkson is that some (e.g Teslas) can outstrip most petrol cars performance wise - though they may use more electricity per mile than many others. Various forms of electric hybrids are being tested for racing, but this has nothing to do with efficiency, and they may actually "burn" up more energy than more conventional cars, but features such as regenerative braking, and the high acceleration possible with electric motors is what interests speed freaks.