Electric vehicles: cleantech dream or reality?

May 3, 2011

In our work on clean technology and automotive PR, we've been working Simon Wittenberg. Here's a guest post written by Simon on the future of electric vehicles in the UK. 

I’m often asked when I think that there will be the mass adoption of the electric car, and I reply with the answer that the shift to zero-emission motoring has started, but the definitive timescale however remains an unknown. This is because there has never been such an important rival to the combustion engine, which has been powering the motorcar for over 100 years.

Hydrogen fuel cell technology, which was once the talk of the town as the future alternative to petrol or diesel power (it is on the road today in the form of the Honda FCX Clarity etc), has been left behind in the cleantech revolution race due to the high cost of this type of powertrain system coupled with it’s relative energy inefficiency, in favour of the hybrid (such as the Toyota Prius and Lexus CT200h models), and subsequently the arrival of the all-electric vehicle.