Confusing prices with crisis

The UK of course suffers at the hands of a repressive petrol pricing system, chief almost amongst a select group of nations for whom the electric vehicle (EV) will be a practical and economic choice as well as an ideological one.

You will have noticed the increased presence of hybrids on UK roads, an indicator if ever there was one of peoples' growing attachment to the idea of clean technologies at least. As legislators continue to lead consumer choice via such measures as the car showroom tax, the practical and the environmental begin to look increasingly like the same thing.

Compared to somewhere like the United States where petrol prices are still cheap enough to make the average European cringe, Europeans have every incentive to go electric.

And buyers of new cars in the UK, as well as countries like Norway, should be facing savings of around £1500 annually on fuel alone if they choose to buy an electric car.

When the Nissan leaf and the Mitsubishi iMiEV come online in the next two years this sort of saving will be a reality.

Despite uncertainty with regards to resale values and questions still to be answered with regards to what exactly is happening with the buying or leasing of batteries, buyers in Europe should flock to the EV.

It's a case of ideological pressures and increased environmental knowledge combining with plain old market forces. The consumer choice begins to look like a no-brainer.

Yet from a global point of view it is down to countries like the US to take the lead in changing macro design and consumer habits. Major polluters like the US see liberty and the big car engine as synonymous.

And US commentators believe the EV buyers there will not be making their choice on the back of the financial data alone. But this begins to sounds like a forlorn hope confused with an attachment to their own ludicrously cheap oil prices.