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Electric car sales could plummet while consumers wait for the government’s cash incentive to arrive in two years time, according to the sellers of the G-Wiz.

The Department for Transport has pledged to give electric and plug-in hybrid car buyers £2000 to £5000 incentives from 2011 onwards.

“Why wait two years when other countries already have subsidies?” said a spokesperson for GoinGreen, the UK importer for the G-Wiz.

“There is now a danger that the proposals will actually...Read the full article

Too bloody right, the entire point of the scheme is to get rid of the Gee Wiz image of electric vehicles. The Gee Wiz is basically a kit car with milk float like technology. It's also not a car and it doesn't meet car safety standards.

Aren't they officialy Quadracycles rather than cars? Driven on a bike license I think. Still they will benefit from the scrappage scheme a little, but they do strike me as being those plastic buggies you get to put kids in to push them round certain shopping centres, just with an electrc motor in them.

Talksteer:

the entire point of the scheme is to get rid of the Gee Wiz image of electric vehicles.

Totally agree. Gee Wiz is trying to make hay while they've got the market more or less to themselves, and before better-developed alternatives come along to blow them out of the water. They've been gipping buyers with monopoly prices (for toytown cars) for long enough. They should either spend this two-year grace period developing a better next-gen offering or just shut up and continue making money while they can.

If these incentives have to benefit the U.K economy, then these Electric cars will obviously have to be made in the U.K. In the present scenario where its been imported, an incentive will only directly benefit foreign carmakers and their respective importers. Two years will perhaps give enough time to set up a local electric car industry and also engineer better electric cars rather than the crude, highly impractical and unsafe plastic carts on wheels.

Audi Tastic:

they do strike me as being those plastic buggies you get to put kids in to push them round certain shopping centres, just with an electrc motor in them.

Nope, the kids version is safer and has better impact protection!

Gee Wiz's fear of a sales slump is surely a tacit acceptance of the inadequacy of their own product. If it was worthy, surely people would continue to buy it irrespective of subsidies two years down the road? Presumably Gee Wiz has reached sales saturation point among those city dwellers happy to shell out £8k for the 48-mile range car, or nearly twice that for the 75-mile L-ION version. Gumph.