It seems to me that electric cars can sometimes get worse press than they might actually deserve, I found it quite refreshing to stumble across this video that has a more positive viewpoint.

It's also about time I made an electric car thread.

Did a bit of research on public charging places across the UK and was quite surprised how many there are now, I believe every city has multiple charging points.

UK Charging Points Map

Yes even Lincoln gets charging points after Top Gear famously pointed out they didn't have any.
http://www.autoblog.com/2011/08/04/nissan-top-gear-here-have-two-chargers/

Anyway, Here's the video:

  Very interesting vid, guess you'd actually have to get in and drive one.  It would be nice to see what they are doing with batteries and how much room they take up.
Carl2

I can answer your question I think Carl2.

The battery is in the floor of the car:



And the battery is  "Laminated lithium-ion" technology, which is an improvement over standard "lithium-ion".

Here is a video about possible future battery technology, quite interesting.

I could do with one of those batteries in my mobile.

Data,
  Thanks for finding that, lots of useful info.  Perhaps with the need for electric batteries used for electricity grids we will make gains in the electric batteries used in cars.  I keep thinking the fuel needed to propel a space rocket is the majority of the weight.
Carl2

The Tesla model 3 is out now.

https://www.teslamotors.com/en_GB/model3

https://www.yahoo.com/tech/tesla-already-lowering-model-3-expectations-two-key-194258835.html

Nice advertising but at 35,000 I'd probably put the money into a luxury car which I wouldn't do.  I do like the 215 miles per charge, available late 2017.  Give them a few years to get the bugs out.  According to what I learned electricity is the most expensive forms of energy, gas prices are half of what they had been.
Carl2

The Tesla is a nice looking car but way out of most people price range, where as you can get a 1 to 2 year old secondhand Nissan LEAF for around £7000, to my mind, in reach of most people.

Carl2, you yanks are very lucky with the price of your petrol (gas). In Europe we pay a lot more, over here an electric car cost roughly as much to fuel as a very economical small engine diesel car.

We save money in other ways if we go electric, road tax and servicing.
However that might get canceled out with a need for a new battery. It is hard to find an exact life expectancy of the battery, some people have got 60,000 miles out of them already, it would take me a long time to do that amount of miles.

I attended a career fair at the college last Friday, and found that Tesla had a booth there. As it turns out, the batteries for Tesla's cars are made nearby, and they were looking for warehouse workers for their Reno facilities. Of course I'm too old and broken to do that sort of work, but it was fun to think about.

  Since my cousin pasted away I do very little driving, he's not that far away but it adds up.  The cars been pretty good and I'm trying to take care of problems before they happen.  They have made so many improvements in cars since I started driving and some things are totally different. 
  I guess I'd want to test drive a new Electric car so I'd have something to compare it to before looking at the used Elecrtic cars.  It's possible my car could outlast me but for now I think I'd stick with the gas cars and let the manufactures find some of the problems that people run into, also the service techs have to learn about how to service them.
Carl2

Near future, hybrids are a better option. Battery tech is getting there but there's been no big innovations since lithium was introduced. I think the stats are 40 years to get 4 to 5 times energy density. Moore's law it isn't.
The new tech coming through seems to be on how quickly you can charge a battery.

Hydrogen fuel cells are still looking good or maybe some new hybrid between these and batteries.

The infrastructure is there already for plugin cars across the UK, with thousands of charging points. They are relatively cheap to install, the electricity is there already under the pavements. There are something like 67,000 electric cars on our roads already in the UK.

To my mind the future is here, we just need to embrace it, maybe make a couple of life style changes along the way.

Hydrogen fuel cells, where is the infrastructure ?

The future is electric cars, we all know this.

My next car will be electric, watch this space
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67,000 out of 34,000,000.

It's a start.

Indeed Snowy, we are at the start.

People who just use their cars for shopping and visiting aunty Flow on Sundays or do few miles to work really could switch to electric right now, they should have few problems with the technology. I fully understand that some businesses like delivery drivers or long distance stuff need something else.

Lets see how these electric car stats increase over time.

QuoteThe last three years have seen a remarkable surge in demand for electric vehicles in the UK – new registrations of plug-in cars increased from 3,500 in 2013 to more than 58,000 at the beginning of April 2016

It is quite hard to get exact figures, some of what I've posted might not be exactly correct. 

http://www.nextgreencar.com/electric-cars/statistics/

  I just did a search for electric cars in the US, the first website was from 2013-14,  The Nissan Leaf seemed to have no completion, very easily the largest seller.  The next website was for the electric cars being sold in 2015, giving Prices, Efficiency, Range, Pics, More.  it covers hybrid and 100% elec.  Ranges go from 80 miles to 110, prices seem to be 25,000 to over 30,000, this is from the better models and a vehicle that still resembles a car.
  It seems that " you'll add just about 4 miles of charge or driving range in one hour of charging " and you should buy an "Electric Vehicle Service Equipment" (aka EVSE) and this increases the miles added per hour to about 11 to 22, the cost for the EVSE is about 1000.
Carl2