It’s clear (to me at least) that we can’t continue to burn oil in personal cars in the amounts we do now indefinitely. With that in mind, here’s what a couple of Italians have with an old Fiat 500. They’ve retrofitted it with batteries and an electric motor to create the Post Peak Car.

Yes, it’s a small car – but she’s also a very tall girl!

The car will cover 100km between charges, has an effective efficiency of ~280mpg and running costs are approximately 1/5 what they were with petrol.

Full details and videos here.

...but as with all electric cars, where's the electricity going to come from? If it's a fossil-fuel power station, it's actually more efficient to drive a petrol / diesel car...

But I don't think that was your point!

Do you get her free with the car?

...but as with all electric cars, where's the electricity going to come from? If it's a fossil-fuel power station, it's actually more efficient to drive a petrol / diesel car...

Urm, no, electric cars are more efficient that petrol/diesel cars, considerably so.

True the electricity has to come from somewhere - the benefit is that electric cars decouple cars from their current single primary energy source (oil) and allow anything to be used - coal, gas, hydro, nuclear, wind, tidal etc etc. It's this flexibility of primary energy sources and increased overall efficiency that make electric cars so attractive.

Easy, put a wind turbine on the roof, charge the batteries while driving, whoa!

Seriously, that's a drawback (especielly in the UK, here we enjoy the gifts of the great god - hydroelectric power - plus a few nuclear power plants). But of course spare batteries could be charged using wind power, solar cells and so on.

This information regarding the e-version of Pug 106 is interesting in times like these: "Running costs are 1p per mile when charged overnight on Economy 7. If charging during the day is necessary, the rate increases to about 2.5 p per mile."

When battery costs are added the picture change, however.

Nissan produced a nice estate (Nissan Altra), range 120 miles, top speed 80 MPH, 5 hrs to charge...

Sooner or later we'll be there I think.

The only currently viable option is hydrogen powered.

HOWEVER, the technology needed is currently too expensive to make it into your local dealer anytime soon!

Well i totally agree with the first point.. we cant go on just burning all these fuels forever. One day they'll be gone!!

Electric powered cars has surely got to be the future... different energy sources can be used which do not require using fossil fuels and putting co2 into the atmosphere.

Think we're getting pretty advanced in technology now...

Has anybody seen the tesla roadster at all?

Fully electric 2 seater sports car... 0-60 in under 4 secs and top speed of 125mph and will do up to 245 miles to one charge!!!

Tesla Motors

Urm, no, electric cars are more efficient that petrol/diesel cars, considerably so.

You're not comparing like-for-like. For starters, electric cars (with a few exceptions like the Tesla) tend to have much lower power outputs than petrol/diesel ones (have you seen the size of a 100kW electric motor?), so it's a bit like saying a 1.0l Fiat Panda is more efficient than a 6.0l Ferrari Enzo.

Sure, the amount of waste energy produced by an electric car of given power output once charged will be less than that for a conventional car of the same power output once fuelled, but in order to go from (for the sake of argument) rig to tanker to gas terminal to gas grid to gasometer to boiler to heat exchanger to turbine to transformer to electricity grid to transformer to mains to batteries to motor to wheels is less efficient that going from rig to tanker to refinery to tanker to petrol/diesel pump to engine to gearbox to wheels.

I do agree that an electric car powered by zero-carbon / carbon-neutral electricity will be much more environmentally friendly, but seeing how the vast majority of the UK's electricity comes from fossil fuels, then an electric car of a given power output will be responsible for more CO2 per mile than a petrol/diesel one of the same power output...

I think at the current time it doesn't really make sense to switch to a fully electric car... but that is dependent on your circumstances i suppose.

But in regards to saving the planet until more renewable energy sources are used it just isn't going to work.

Here in lancaster we have a big wind farm just off the coast... another a few miles away on a hill side and our main power comes from the nuclear station in Heysham!!!