There are quite a few electric cars for sale on ebay. Not sure if that is a good or bad thng really but i see that most are in London.

What about a car with solar panels on the roof for charging? Should be Ok for most of the year and have a long cable for emergency charging from your place of work. What about one of those light weight ones with pedal back-up.
Obviously a completely off the cuff response with no proper technical knowledge
Does raise the question of should we be commuting further than walking or cycling range!

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"20 miles each way is easy for an electric car.
 
Probably cheaper to run than anything else that is powered.
 
Longer journeys are their problem.

Just what i have been thinking Dave. i live out in the countryside and have no opportunity to even view an electric car. If I want a test drive i will have to travel 90 moles to cardiff as I'm beyond their range and there are none that I know of farther west than cardiff.
 
Anyone in west wales got one? I'd love to see it.

Regarding the poll on electric and/or hybrid vehicles: how about the answer "I drive very little so always run pretty old cars. I'll consider an electric or hybrid when there are old ones available".

Good idea Ed. I'll add that to the poll options now.

With fuel prices falling again it looks very much as though the eo-activists have been crying wolf all these years.

The call is too close to judge right now on the electric car poll. I don't believe it. there are as many people saying their next car will be either electric or hybrid as there are saying the technology is a non-starter.
 
It suggests one of two things. That this site is either attracting real dyed-in-the-wool greenies or lovers of nuke power

DavieyG
-well, i read in 1998 that daimler benz were going to go electric in 2002/3, so back then I thought, wow, i'll save.
Now, years down the line, no car at all, just hiring on a needs only basis.
I have learnt a lot in that time, batteries=electric car, and the current state of batteries means electric cars will not take off. Plus, the is not enough lithium in the world for current tech batteries to go main stream. I love what Isreal, denmark and Australia have signed up to do. However the will have to be a shift in tech, one that has to be brought to main stream, maybe even discovered.
I voted non-starter. I live in hope though, and if one comes along, i'll buy it pdq. I am not catered for on the poll. I read around too much.
as for nukes? too late now for UK. takes years of planning. I am not against nukes, sadly. So you may right

To be honest, this electric/hybrid stuff is all a lot of huff and puff about nothing - it's an interim or intermediate stage (much like laser discs - remember them?).
 
If we're to retain 'cars' in the future, the only (near) zero-carbon fuel; and fuel technology; which will be available in our lifetimes is Hydrogen. See here if you're not aware of this car which was featured on Top Gear the other week: http://automobiles.honda.com/fcx-clarity/ or here: http://www.topgear.com/uk/car-news/Honda-fcx-la.
 
Undoubtedly there'll be something even better eventually, but for the time being this technology is just what the doctor ordered. I just wish our Govt would spend a bit of money ensuring that we will become self-sufficient in useable Hydrogen as soon as humanly possible in the future. Terrorism and 'all that' is a smokescreen - the real worries are global warming and reliance on foreign fossil fuels. Innovative hydrogen usage could eliminate both these problems...

I feel that electric cars are going to cause much non localised pollution, mining lithium, the issues surrounding battery disposal and the short working life of a pack, not to mention the cost.
 
The real answer is staring us in the face. BMW and others have adopted internal combusion engines to burn hydrogen. This technology goes back a long time, back in fact to WW2 where people used to run trucks on woodgas, (hydrogen from the partial combustion of wood in a burner on the back of the truck).
 
We could have existing infrastructure at petrol stations used to supply hydrogen and really simple technology to adapt current car build lines to supply suitable cars without reinventing the entire process.
 
Plus we can retrofit.
 
Fuel cells and batteries are non starters just because of the volumes of raw materials required to create the parts. We do not have enough platinum group elements to create the fuel cells on a large scale. I am a geologist and did the calculations based on total reserves of PGE's. Would not last us 10 years, (assuming that we can recover 100% of the material in any case, which we can not).
 
Lithium for batteries is even more scarce, plus the environmental damage that results from mining in countries with no real environmental control or legal framework.
 
Hydrogen production is also the best way of storing the energy from the non linear output from many of the renewable technologies.
 
It would also be a way out of poverty for many African nations if they constructed the solar farms to produce hydrogen, liquify and export it.
 
All in all, I hope that attention is diverted towards using internal combustion engines to hydrogen. It is the path of least resistance to removing a vast source of unsustainable energy consumption and pollution, not just of the air but of groundwater, a resource that is badly abused by fossil fuels.

Yes. there are alternatives ahead and the electric batteries is just a small one hopefully. And I believe it gonna be very good. Can't wait for the day when you'll be able to get the same car on 4 or 5 types of fuel. It would be very nice to see "the bigger cats" are getting on the train (Lexus, Audi, Jaguar)...Has anyone heard any news in the luxury vehicles class?

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how about a electric scooter for short journeys
the cheapest convertible on the market
and the wind through your hair
i ride a motorbike 20 miles to work filtering through
traffic 20 minutes 55mpg in the car 1 hour 35mpg
newer scooters have lithium ion 9,000 deep cycles batteries
for long charges better than older lead acid batteries

Well i feel the technology has advanced enough to cope up with the winters.
20 miles are not that big a distance for electric cars..
feel free to buy a good 1..