[solutions4finance]

Sorry for the lack of input into my own post - I've been too tied up with business to be on here! (New ventures to be revealed in the very near future!).

I must admit that being a "country boy", and living on Dartmoor, I've alsways been a user of gas-guzzling 4x4's. Having said that, my need for a "proper" 4x4 has diminished, so I'm now thinking of what to get.

Some interesting comments made on here so far, and I have taken them all on board.

I'm about to launch a second website dedicated to the van and commercial vehicle market (the current website attracts loads of car buyers, but not too many in the commercial vehilce sector).

I did consider a site dedicated entirely to "green cars", but the area is so vast, with so many grey areas, that I've decided to just include it within the current site.

Keep adding your thoughts, they're interesting and are very thought provoking.

[AccountingBasics]

Midlands Today are showing an article on electric cars. This will be shown at 6.30 tonight.

The report includes Smart cars which are converted in the Midlands to run on electric, a commercial electric vehicle built in the Midlands and an interview with my husband on how he uses the G-wiz and hopefully some film as well.

[solutions4finance]

Not living in the midlans I won't be able to see it... do you know if there's any way of watching it on the web?

The G-Wiz cars do look really interesting. I'm currently looking to "add them in" to our list of contract hire cars so that we can start building a portfolio of "eco-cars". I'd be interested to hear what people think of them.

Justin

[AccountingBasics]

Here is the link for the electric car interview in the Midlands

http://http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7609306.stm

If you want to know more about the G-wiz either send me a PM or look on the G-Wiz forums. There is lots of useful information, including technical details.

http://http://www.g-wiz.org.uk/index.html

[MikeBoxwell]

Having stood in a cold, blowy auction hall the other day watching cars go under the hammer, what is really noticeable is that four wheel drives and larger executive cars simply aren't selling.

Freelanders are getting bids of a few hundred quid and going through unsold, V6 powered Mercedes, BMWs and Rovers aren't getting a single bid, Ford Mondeos are getting half-hearted bids of a few hundred and are put through to the next auction.

According to dealers, only cheap cars are selling: i.e. cars that are cheap to buy and cheap to run. Everything else is just sitting on the forecourt going nowhere.

Now is not the time to be a car dealer, unless you're specialising in environmentally friendly vehicles.

My name is Mike, and I'm the husband of Angela - registered here as AccountingBasics. I drive a G-Wiz electric car for commuting too and from work, and I run the G-Wiz Electric Car Owner's Club.

The G-Wiz is the best selling electric car here in the UK at the moment. If you live in the centre of London, you'll know all about them: you'll see half a dozen on every street corner. If you live outside the centre of London, I suspect you've never seen one ever in your life.

There are around 2,000 electric cars on the streets of London now, and although those figures sound tiny, that does mean that in the City of London, or in Camden or Westminster - for instance - electric cars make up a significant percentage of all the cars on the road.

Electric cars are getting more and more attention and not a week goes by when I'm not talking to a journalist or television researcher about some aspect of electric cars. Over the next few years, we're going to see electric cars being launched by most of the major car manufacturers and some industry experts believe that the petrol powered car will be almost wiped out within ten years.

Having read an FIA report on the projected demand of petrol between 2010 and 2020 I can see why: nobody is going to be able to afford to drive a petrol powered car by 2020.

In the meantime, there are a lot of problems that manufacturers have got to get over before electric vehicles really become a reality. Making them cost effective has been the biggest problem, plus the infrastructure to handle them is another burden.

I've spoken with people at companies like EDF Energy who are responsible for predicting future demands for electricity, plus senior representitives of oil companies like BP and Shell, and some of the revelations have been shocking. Generating enough electricity actually isn't going to be a problem, but ensuring we have enough petrol to hold out until electric vehicles are sufficiently advanced to take over.....

Just this past week I've been interviewed by the BBC about the future of electric vehicles in the UK. The programme - Costing The Earth - goes out on Radio Four in a couple of weeks time. In it, I've been explaining about some of the problems that electric vehicle manufacturers have had to overcome in order to make their cars viable. It's a very exciting industry and although it is very small and insignificant now, I suspect it will be a very busy one in four years time.

[Alvin]

Hi Mike surprised to hear that diesel mondeo's were not selling.?

We were going to set up a website selling congestion free vehicles,but have put it on hold as Boris the Bafoon has decided that the majority of the cars we had lined up would no longer be congestion charge free.

I believe it was cars with a lower emmission than 120 Co.?

Earl

[MikeBoxwell]

That is correct. The congestion charge was going to be waived for cars with taxation classes 'A' and 'B' instead of just taxation class 'A'.

Thankfully, Boris reversed that because the proposed changes would have increased traffic and pollution in London quite considerably and not have any real benefit.

You'd also have been working on a moving target. Taxation class 'B' changes the year after next, so instead of cars producing less than 120g/km, it will only affect cars producing less than 110g/km - so a lot of people who ended up buying what they thought were congestion-free cars would have ended up being hit with the congestion charge anyway.

There will be a number of class 'A' cars appearing over the next year: Ford, Fiat, Toyota, Citroen and VW are all launching new class 'A' cars. If you want to buy a class 'A' car now, there's the VW Polo, second hand Honda Insights and about half a dozen electric cars available.

One thing which we do need to see - and has been eluded by a number of posts here - are environmentally efficient cars that are interesting and fun to drive: sporty coupe's and family cars. These are the cars that will start to change people's opinion of eco-motoring.

They're coming next year - the Lightning GT, Tesla, MG X-Power electric supercar will lead the way with specialist Porsche beating high performance cars; the next generation Toyota Supra and Prius are promised to provide more entertainment and style, and the new Honda Insight is supposed to be a good drivers car as well.

[wplancs]

Better setting up of the ECU would make better use of the fuel and provide more MPG. It is what I now do for a living. By the way, my own car runs on LPG.
wplancs