3/7/2005 - Is Car Leasing Still a Good Deal?
leasing electric cars, electric cars lease, leasing electric carsHaving a keen interest in economical cars I was pleased to see that a number of major car manufacturers are keen to bring out good quality electric or hydrogen fuel cell car. At the current time I think that most of the cars are not yet ready for production. The Mitsubishi has been on test for quite some time and is ready for the road. It produces amazing figures from all accounts, and looks like a small 5 door hatchback.
The Government needs to install charge areas now throughout the country. The cars take around 20 to 45 minutes to charge the batteries to 80% of their max. This will give you a range on most cars of around 100 miles. So long distance journeys are out of the question at present.
London, Milton Keynes and the north-east of England are first on the list for the charge areas, followed by the Midlands, east of England, Greater Manchester, Northern Ireland and Scotland.
Reports state that the costs of running the cars are around 2p (Yes 2p) a mile. So a 100 mile journey will cost you around ??2. Lets look at this against a car that does 30mpg. At the current rate of ??1.30 a litre, that is 4.5 litres to a gallon = around ??5.90 for a gallon of fuel to run you just 30 miles, x by 3 at just 90 miles you would have spent ??17.70. Hard to believe how much it actually costs to run a car these days.
Electric cars do have their own issues though. Carbon Dioxide is produced from the batteries and vast amounts will be produced if we turn to electric. The low cost of recharging electric cars could change as always if the electric companies start charging higher prices when we have switched over to electric.
There is nothing to say that once electric becomes a super power as gas and oil is now, that the price of electric will not do from pennies to pounds. Its not an ideal world and unfortunately people do tend to fill their own pockets in these large countries.
We could also end up with an electric car tax disc. The roads will still need repairing, and they need money from somewhere for the repairs. A new GPS system that is being trailed in Germany and Switzerland could well be fitted to all vehicles in the future. This works by GPS signal and tells the operator when a car is actually on the road. From that they will be able to charge you per kilometre or mile travelled.
This GPS is currently being tested just on motorways on certain weight. But there is nothing to say it won't come out on every car. The cost of fitting it to a new car - less than ??100 per vehicle.
It's quite clear though that the cost of fuel in the UK at least is way out of control. In places not too far away you can still buy petrol and diesel for less than 25p a litre.
The car charging points throughout the UK have been bidden for and successfully issued to public sector bodies. Let's hope they can start to put this system into place and we can look at cheaper ways of fuelling the vehicles we use.
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