The dawn of the electric car

How do I get one of these grants?
There's no rush. The money won't be available until 2011 and the total budget for the scheme is just £250m. So even if the grant covered the entire cost of the car, that would only be enough for 50,000 cars - just 2 per cent of the 2.7 million cars sold every year in the UK. Worse: there may be nothing out there for you to buy. The Government has now confirmed that the grant won't be available for currently popular electric cars, like the Indian-made G-Wiz, or hybrid ones like the Toyota Prius, but only for the next generation of 'electric only' and 'plug-in hybrid' vehicles, expected to hit the market in the next few years.

What's wrong with the current lot?
Hybrids now on sale use a petrol engine to charge their electric batteries as they go along, and you can't plug them in at the mains; the G-Wiz can only go 40 miles before a recharge is needed. The subsidy is aimed at newer models of purely electric cars with greater speed and range, and at 'plug-in' hybrids that have larger batteries and can be charged up at home.

And are these new models 'the real deal'?
The Government and the car industry certainly hope so. The new cars "won't be slightly odd", said Transport Secretary Geoff Hoon, launching the subsidy: "they'll be cars we can use on an everyday basis." Some will be made by innovative start-up companies like Tesla, whose sporty electric Roadster can reach 60mph in 3.9 seconds and has a range of 244 miles; others by the big, established manufacturers, like GM. The US car giant has invested more than $1bn in the Chevy Volt, a plug-in hybrid whose technology will arrive in the UK in the body of the new Vauxhall Ampera, a green version of the Vauxhall Astra. The plan is that such cars will be reliable and safe, and cheap enough finally to coax us away from the petrol-driven past.

And is there any chance they really will?
There has definitely been progress. Battery technology, above all with lithium-ion batteries (see 'Lithium and the Bolivian question, next page), has helped tackle so-called 'range anxiety' - the fear that electric cars may suddenly run out of power. Thus the Chevy Volt has been designed to run purely on electric power for drives of up to 40 miles (80 per cent of American commutes are shorter than this) and then to switch to hybrid technology for longer journeys.

So what are the problems?
There are two big ones. The first is lack of infrastructure: electric cars need high-voltage charging points but these are almost non-existent in the UK. The Government plans to spend £20m installing charging facilities in town centres, but transport analysts say the real cost will run into billions. The second problem - arising mainly from the cost of the bulky batteries - is price. Tesla's Roadster, for instance, costs from around £66,000; the Vauxhall Ampera will be over £20,000 - double that of a conventional Astra.

But won't we save millions in petrol?
Theoretically, yes. Right now it costs about £1.50 to charge an electric Mini overnight, compared to, say, about £15 for an equivalent amount of petrol. And as oil becomes scarcer, the price of petrol will soar further. However, most of the current cost of petrol is tax - about 60p in every £1 - and the Government will need to tax electricity in the same way if it is to cope with the extra demand for energy from a national fleet of electric vehicles. The current number of electric cars is so small - 179 were sold in the UK last year - that it has no impact on the way we consume electricity.

And would that radically change?
It depends how popular the cars become. In a study commissioned by Gordon Brown in 2007, Professor Julia King of Aston University said that switching the UK's 27 million cars to electric would lead to a mere 16 per cent rise in national electricity demand. But Keith Buchan, an independent transport consultant, points out that this assumes all cars would be charged evenly across each 24-hour period; in reality most would be plugged in overnight. Buchan says Britain's off-peak electricity capacity is currently less than a quarter of that required to charge the nation's cars between midnight and 6am. In short, to have green cars, we'd need a lot more power stations.

What are the environmental implications of all this?
Around 12 per cent of Britain's carbon emissions come from cars, so there are real benefits in 'de-carbonising' transport, as we are aiming to cut our emissions by 42 per cent by 2020 and 80 per cent by 2050. But such gains are only meaningful if the extra electricity we need comes from clean sources. Today, just 5 per cent of the UK's electricity comes from renewable sources, and a further 20 per cent from nuclear. Although these percentages may increase, the likeliest and quickest source of new energy in the UK is going to be new coal-fired power stations. Unless these can successfully employ carbon-capture technology, electric and hybrid cars may prove as 'dirty' as their petrol and diesel counterparts.

So they're a waste of effort?
Not necessarily. Proponents argue their very popularity will increase pressure on governments to tackle pollution at power-station level. And optimistic new firms like Better Place foresee a future of 'vehicle-to-grid' technology, in which extra power stored in car batteries will be able to flow back into the electricity system at times of peak demand.

But are cars even the answer?
Most environmentalists claim that changing the way we travel - better timetabling for public transport, car sharing, etc - is just as key as altering car technology. If Britons walked and cycled as much as the Germans, who do both almost three times more than we do, transport emissions could drop by 5 per cent. But then, as George Monbiot argues in the Guardian, the Government "doesn't have a transport policy; it has a car policy".

Lithium and the Bolivian question
The future for electric transport, say the experts, lies in lithium-ion batteries, which have higher storage capacity than old lead-acid or nickel-metal versions. This is expected to cause a huge surge in demand for lithium, Earth's lightest metal, which was previously used in ceramics and psychiatric drugs and, more recently, electronics. But is there going to be enough? Estimates vary wildly, both of demand and supply. Some geologists say there are only four million tons of lithium carbonate, found in brine, on the planet, others more like 30 million. The US Geological Survey puts the answer somewhere in between. And predictions of the number of electric cars by 2020 stretch from very few to ten million. But most agree that the future for lithium involves Bolivia.

There are big lithium deposits in Chile, Australia and Russia, but the world’s largest (between an eighth and half the global total) lie under the Bolivian salt flats. Mitsubishi and French industrialist Vincent Bolloré have already approached Bolivia’s govern-ment about building plants there. But there are likely to be problems, both environmental – lithium mining has already poisoned the water supply in parts of Chile – and political: Bolivia is run by socialist leader Evo Morales, soulmate of Hugo Chávez and Fidel Castro. ·