Top Gear's Hammerhead Eagle i-Thrust Electric Car was 2% of all electric cars built in 2009
Despite eco-mentalists and tree-huggers beseeching us to buy electric cars, just 55 were sold in 2009. What do eco-mentalists actually buy? A big V8?
We’ve made it clear – at every given opportunity – that we think the drive to convince motorists that electric cars are a sensible and viable alternative to cars which use an internal combustion engine is a complete nonesense. And we’ll continue to say it.
We’ll also continue to say that electric cars are viable as small, city runabouts where you never venture more than a few miles from home. There they make sense. And in a city you do get zero emissions. Admittedly, you’ve simply moved those emissions off to wherever the electricity was generated, but you’re making the city a cleaner and quieter place.
But it seems as if either our efforts to convince the great British car buyer that electric cars as a replacement for their ICE powered car is a none starter has worked a treat, or car buyers in the UK are just plain sensible. Because figures released by the SMMT this week show that there were just fifty-five electric cars sold in the UK in the whole of 2009. Hardly more than one a week.
What puzzles us though is what’s happened to all the pompous and pious tree-huggers constantly beseeching one and all to buy an electric car and save the planet? Because we’re damn sure there are more than fifty five such eco-mentalists in the country. It probably means they all drive a V8 Defender.
It also means that the Top Gear’s Hammerhead Eagle i-Thrust Electric Car increased UK electric car production by 2% in 2009 – all on its little own.
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