Editor's view: electric vehicles go the distance

By this time next year expect half a dozen or more new electric cars on our roads. Nissan, Mitsubishi, Citroen and Mercedes are just some of the car manufacturers launching new all-electric models by 2011. But don’t expect to be able to travel far. All have a charge range of 100 miles or under, which means electric cars will still be something of a novelty on our roads for a while yet. 'Range anxiety’, as the motor industry likes to call it, is a major barrier to the Government’s stated plans that every new car sold in the UK by 2020 will be electric or a hybrid. So the news last month that Volkswagen’s Electronics Research Laboratory will be manufacturing electric cars with a 500-mile range within the next 10 years is worth taking note of. 

Martin Eberhard, engineering director at VW’s laboratory in Palo Alto in California, says it’s all down to the type of lithium-ion batteries the company is developing. The laboratory is working exclusively with '18650’-type lithium-ion cells, which are small enough to be found in most laptop computers and which are developing at such speed that they are now capable of delivering 3.4 amp hours of power, compared to 1.4 amp hours five years ago. Hence, Eberhard’s prediction that cars the company is currently working on and can do 150 miles on a charge will be able to travel distances of more than 500 miles by 2020.