Nissan Electric Car

Nissan have announced that they are going to produce their new electric car in the UK. It will have a range of up to 100 miles and can be re-charged from a 13amp socket costing about £1 of electricity for every 38miles.

So far excellent, but I have covered electric cars before and still have the same concerns plus a few more.
If it cost £1 for 38 miles that means it must be taking about 8KWh so to charge for the 100 miles is about 24KWh. Your domestic 13amp plug will take about 3kw maximum so a total re-charge of your car will take about 8hours. That's not too bad is it, plug in overnight and your all set, unless of course you get up in the morning and see it needs a charge before work.

And hang on a minute, I have just seen the car will be ideal for urban driving and city and town dwellers.

I guess it would as long as the town and city dwelling people don't live in houses similar to those on the left. Or it they live in a nice new town house how many of those have a garage, an empty one. Remember even Christmas wreaths get stolen off doors in towns so who is going to leave an extension lead running out the house and down the street to charge the car over night. By morning the whole street will be hooked into your electricity.

My final question is how do you drive an electric car in winter. A petrol car has a heater as a bi-product of cooling the engine, an electric car will have to have an electric heater, say at least 1KW so there goes your 100 mile range down to say 60 if your lucky.

I don't expect to be buying an electric car any time soon, what I am buying is a tow truck, there will be a fortune to be made towing electric cars to a power socket.