"Roland Perry" wrote in message

In message , at 14:09:42 on
Wed, 12 Aug 2009, Recliner remarked:
Nissan's model will include leasing the very expensive battery
pack, which will make the purchase price of the car competitive
with comparable petrol and diesel engined models while still
costing at least 20% less to run.

Assuming the treasury doesn't find a way to tax
electricity-for-motoring at 500% like it does petrol and diesel. I
look forward to fun and games with the Excise turning up to see if
you've illegally topped up your car with "Red electrons".

Even if they fail to do that, I bet the favourable tax treatment of
electric cars won't last long, once they get more popular. And if you
need some sort of special power socket to charge more powerful
electric cars, that would give them to opportunity to insist on a
special meter, so maybe they would be able to tax anyone with an
"electron guzzler".

Substantial new infrastructure will be required, so that gives an
opportunity for "special sockets" at home as well as at communal
charging points.

The infrastructure is needed for all those homes where the car isn't
parked in the drive, and for neighbourhoods where the electrical
supply hasn't been sized to allow everyone to draw an extra 100amps
continuously (ie almost all of them).

Yes, that's a very good point. Imagine if every house in the street was
charging its electric car(s) overnight -- it's pretty unlikely that the
local sub-station and wiring could handle the load. It may be OK if just
one or two houses use 13amp sockets, but not if the whole street is
doing it for hours on end.