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Electric car company REVA has launched a lithium-ion battery version of its G-Wiz city car.

The new REVA G-Wiz, called REVA L-ion in Europe, has a range of 75 miles per charge and is capable of reaching a top speed of 50mph.

REVA has also developed a new fast-charge system that will allow the lithium-ion G-Wiz to achieve a 90 per cent charge in one hour. A full charge from the mains will take the L-ion six hours.

The REVA L-ion will go on sale in February, with the first ca...Read the full article

I often drive from my home town in to the city.   What I can't see is me being able to sit at 50mph in a dinky little car on the motorway between those places.   As much as the Sinclair C5 was laughed at, I can't really see this as being much of an improvement.

Then if this is a joke, we are left with the question is this a sign of things to come?

No, automotive science and engineering has delivered much more already.   When I started driving the car I had a car which gave me 45bhp.   The car I now have is 6 (SIX!) times the power, yet uses less fuel.   It's also larger, had all the creature comforts you could ask for, and is also far far safer too.   Even looking at small cars you see the same, they're much safer with the anti-lock brakes and air bags, yet their MPG is staggering.

Car manufacturers have already done more for the environment that anybody gives them credit for.   There's really no viable alternative to being able to stop at a petrol station and with a few minutes have enough fuel to go another few hundred miles.

I accept the point that modern cars have improved by an amazing degree over the past few years. I also accept that an electric car - certainly at the moment - isn't suitable for everyone.

However, the G-Wiz is a very versatile city car. For sure you wouldn't want to take one on the motorway but for buzzing around town - doing the shopping, dropping the kids off at school, getting to work and doing all the local journeys, the G-Wiz does a very good job.

It's exceptionally easy to drive, has an extremely tight turning circle and is so small you can park it anywhere. It's great to know you can drive anywhere in town and always get parked close to your destination, simply because the car is so small it can be parked anywhere.

Many families already have two cars. Inevitably, you find one car is used for the long journeys and the other for the short 5 to 10 mile journeys. An electric car fits in perfectly into that sort of family.

In short, I would say there is a viable alternatie to being able to stop at a petrol station every few hundred miles: plug your car in at home every night and know you've got enough range to go whereever you want to the next day.  Not everyone drives hundreds of miles in a single day.

I wouldn't call myself a tree-hugger, but I would say I'm concerned about the environment. In reducing pollution, electric cars have their part to play. And before anyone trots out the tired old line of "yes, but the electricity isn't green": the amount of excess electricity that is currently generated every night and morning which is wasted and never used (demand is low but the output from most power stations remains relatively constant) is enough to power around 10% of the vehicles on our roads if they switched to electric.