You need to factor the significant difference in fuel costs into your calculations, otherwise they are worthless.


Electric cars come with a £5k Govt subsidy.

They are currently expensive, but will get cheaper in time.

 

Battery tech will improve, IF they can make a Fuel Cell cheaply & reliable & a H2 infrastructure that doesn't keep blowing up your ally bits/freezing fingers off.

Actual accumulators (as they ought to be called) will only improve marginally. They've been pissing round with them for time immemorial. There's still the generation problem; many parts of the world still rely on coal power, so a switch to HP7mobiles will in the short-term, actually make pollution far worse than the infernal combustion engine! Except (as LG correctly states) NIMBY. If we could develop an effective Capumulator (I've invented the name, so far) for hybrids, that might work. But it's bloody Einstein's fault that it's very hard to do.

Milkfloats, delivery vans & leftiemobils only, I'm afraid.

The bigger issue may be the solution of the world's immediate energy sources by fracking natural gas out of shale. The chemicals injected cause terrible pollution, I understand. An easy alternative to oil won't help the development of greenie technologies.

My other concern is, wasn't everyone up in arms when I was a kid about how New Killer power was gonna destroy the world? Now it seems, it's mended its ways.

 

personal saving yes, but manufacturers don't see any fuel costs related to either electric or regular fuel. why should their be a premium to own alternative powered cars? i guess this is where sales figures come in, but is it really that much more to produce an array of cells, and a motor to drive wheels vs the complexities of an combustion engine? ok, their mass produced, but so are batteries and motors.

and £5k subsidised purchase... so their actually £25k? (or is it £20k -£5k subs)

 

Electric cars currently cost a lot more to produce than petrol ones do, have a search for how much the battery pack in a Nissan Leaf costs, it's a lot more than an ICE at the moment. This will change as more and more are produced as this is the way of things. Remember, plasma TVs used to cost £5000, nowadays you can get the same thing for about £1,000, or even less.

Prices are here http://www.mitsubish...rs.co.uk/imiev/ £23,990 after £5k grant, so list is £28,990.

It's certainly expensive but anyone buying one of these should be factoring in running costs, and the biggest cost of all with any car - depreciation, which is certainly an unknown.

The website has some interesting claims - £270 for 12,000 miles, in a 70mpg diesel, that would cost £1,050 @1.35/l, so the savings aren't huge at present. It'll take a long time to make up the savings over something like a Polo Bluemotion at £15k

In fact, it'll take 11.5 years!!!

As I've said lots of times, it's early days...