Electric Travel

There are so many concepts out there for solar, water and electric vehicles, some are just a dream and some are now reality.

Electric motorcycles have come a long way since the first use of electricity in vehicles, the prices are cheap and the Fuel is even cheaper. An electric motorcycle costing £9000 can travel at 63mph and cover a distance of 60 miles. Costing only 14p a day to fill up 70p a week to get to work and £36.40 a year (52 weeks). If you fill up £30 a week in your car to get to work that will cost you £1560 a Year so using an electric motorcycle instead of buying a new car can save you £1523.60. Over 6 years you have paid of the bike and maybe even less than 6 years if the price of fuel keeps rising, There will still be a need for a car as the bike cannot last for a long distance and can only seat 2 people but using it can cut the cost of your fuels bills by a huge amount.

 Investing in an electric car

Costing the same price as the Diesel version the Renault Zoe really is one to look forward to, due for release in autumn 2012 this car has a top speed of 84mph, 100 miles range and with the easy change stations for long distance travel you can stop for an hour or two have a rest and charge your car. Other impressive electric cars like the Mitsubishi i-MiEV show the costs of using an electric car, the car costs £24,000 with the £5000 government plug in car grant.

Testing the i-MiEV against typical UK urban usage has proved the benefits are real:

•          Costs just £270 to charge for 12,000 miles driving (£2.09 per full charge based on an average of 10p per kWh). If you are using the Economy7 tariff then the cost for 12,000 miles could be as little as £135 (£1.05 per full charge based on an average of 5p per kWh)
•          Low servicing costs and downtime – only 4 major working parts compared to over 300 in a typical internal combustion engine
•   The i-MiEV Mitsubishi Service Plan (MSP) covers the first three years servicing at a cost of just £300
•  Servicing carried out by any one of Mitsubishi’s 133 service dealers
•  Exempt from road tax
•  First year capital allowances for fleet vehicles
•  Zero benefit-in-kind company car tax
•  Exempt from London Congestion Charge
•  Free parking in some London boroughs and cities such as Milton Keynes
•  5 year battery warranty and 3 year vehicle warranty

After looking at these cars you can really see that the future is electric.