We all know we should be driving electric-powered cars, but what are the practicalities of owning one? Charles Rangeley-Wilson considers the best models for a trip down electric avenue in the countryside
It’s not that I’m antediluvian—except when it comes to fitting touchscreens to cars. I do believe that technology, rather than asceticism, will pull us out of the climatic hole we’ve dug ourselves into. It’s more that there’s a tipping point with new technology and my few brushes with EVs had done little to convince me we’d reached it.
There was very lovely SUV hybrid made by a certain Scandiwegian firm, for example, that was powered by a small turbocharged engine and a big battery. All the figures looked great on paper: loads of power, a gazillion miles to the gallon. In the real world, however, although the car was utterly lovely, it had an electric range of precisely 17 miles and, beyond that, fell back on an overstretched two-litre that had to pedal hard and drink hard, too. I struggled to break 30 to the gallon.
And yet, and yet. It’s not just Tesla anymore. BMW, Hyundai, Nissan, Audi, VW and Jaguar have all recently launched genuinely useable EVs. The supercar makers have latched on to the stratospheric levels of performance battery technology offers, suggesting that the end of the internal combustion engine (ICE) won’t also be the end of fun: 1,900bhp anyone? That could make up for the lack of a V8 growl.
この記事は Country Life UK の June 26, 2019 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
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この記事は Country Life UK の June 26, 2019 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
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