Our ‘Building a Home Workshop’ series (starts here) has been very popular. So what’s the workshop like after being in use for 9 months? What’s been learned about its performance in that time?

Firstly, the excellent.

The lighting system (an expensive and very powerful system using a lot of suspended metal halide luminaries) is well worth the time and money involved in its installation. You can be working in the late afternoon and as evening falls, not even notice the change in lighting. You can work as efficiently in the middle of the night as the middle of the day.

The internal layout – the position of power points, machine tools and workbenches – has also proved excellent. The ‘island’ workbench is particularly effective, as is the proximity of the welding bench to the main workbench. 

The tall headroom is also noticeable every time I swing a piece of tube or even carry the ladder. Talking about the ladder, the storage of items high up (clearing floor space) has also proved to work very well.

Now, the bad.

I chose to install two skylight panels on the north-facing part of the roof, down the end of the workshop furthest from the roller doors. These work well in that the summer heat build-up caused by their presence is limited but they still provide a lot of light. However, I should have used one more panel so that the back wall of the workshop (where the machine tools are located) was evenly illuminated. As it is now, on a cloudy day, the drill press, grinder and hydraulic press are a bit dim.

Ventilation is also not sufficient. Even with the two roller doors up, the twin whirligig ventilators working and a fan moving air within the workshop, the build-up of fumes while brazing or welding is excessive. This is one aspect I think I will have to change – either adding an extraction hood and exhaust fan over the welding bench or placing an opening window in the far wall.

Finally, the concrete floor has proved to be very soft, not just in the second batch (which I always knew was soft) but also in the first batch. To avoid damaging the floor, items cannot be dragged across it and nothing can be hammered on it.

Overall? Very happy indeed.

Normally it was presaged by a squealing of tyres, followed by a loud bang. On one occasion I can remember that after the bang there was the sound of an engine revving hard.

What had happened was a car crash at one of the local road intersections.

All the roads were grid-like; all used the ‘give way to the right’ rule – I don’t remember any ‘stop’ or ‘give way’ signs at those junctions. 

The frequency of crashes was so high that when the right noises occurred in sequence, no-one stood around wondering what was going on: instead, everyone started running towards the scene.

Then, when I was about 13 or 14, the crashes suddenly stopped. What had happened was that small roundabouts had been placed in the intersections where crashes had most frequently occurred.

I don’t remember hearing a single crash from that point onwards. There might have been some minor bingles, but as the intersections had become quite tight, they would have been only at low speeds.

At the roundabouts drivers were travelling less quickly and were also required to be observant and participatory. Well, certainly less quickly, and more observant and participatory, than they had been when barrelling through a junction with just a cursory glance to the right.

I was reminded of my childhood because I have been increasingly hearing the idea that many traffic lights should be removed. That’s especially the case on secondary and tertiary (feeder) roads.

The arguments go like this:

• When traffic lights are green, people assume an absolute right of way. They don’t check for other cars and in fact, pay little attention to anything other than the colour of the light. So when crashes occur at traffic light controlled intersections, the impact speeds are high and so the crashes are likely to cause death or major injury.

• Even traffic lights controlled by smart systems (variable length time periods, sequencing of green lights on successive intersections) can, through prolonged idling times, cause increases in fuel consumption and emissions.

• The cost (both in installation and in running) of traffic lights is much higher than many other traffic control approaches.

It is being said by some that rather than giving driver apparent certainty, it is better in many situations to create uncertainty – to make the driver unsure of their surroundings. Perhaps the best example of that are those (rare in Australia) precincts that mix both pedestrian and vehicular traffic – cars just creep along at a walking pace.

Of course, in many applications traffic lights are just fine.

But the next time you’re out on the road in city conditions, note the dozens – perhaps hundreds – of traffic lights you pass, and start to consider: are these really necessary… or could this intersection have been handled in a different, simpler, cheaper and more effective way?

A long time ago I came up with an electronic way of overcoming a boost cut on a turbo car. For less than a dollar, you could prevent a MAP sensor output from rising above a certain voltage. And for that single dollar, the voltage level was also adjustable.

At that time (and remember, it’s long ago – when I was certainly a lot more innocent), I told a turbo workshop proprietor about the technique, and how I was writing a story on it for a national magazine.

As this guy sold commercially produced boost cut units for lots of money, I thought he’d be fascinated by the approach.

But no, not a bit of it.

“You shouldn’t put that sort of technology into the hands of people who don’t know what they’re doing,” he said.

“Today’s cars are complex and people will blow up engines.”

When I pointed out that  someone could blow-up their engine if you gave them even a screwdriver, he was taken aback.

Of course, the reason he didn’t like the idea of a DIY $1 boost cut unit was that his market for $200 ones was likely to evaporate.

So one reason that experts hate amateurs working in their patch is that often it costs them money.

Another reason is more subtle: it implicitly belittles their expertise and training.

I remember once when I was getting a lot of arc welding done. I was building a supercharger bracket and the 10mm steel plate was being welded by a local welding specialist. He was doing a very good job, too – and at a high cost.

Watching him in action, I thought I should invest in an arc welder – and the next week I bought a cheap secondhand welder. When he was doing my next lot of welding I told him of my purchase, expecting that he would be enthusiastic.

But as with the boost cut man, again not a bit of it.

“It takes years of experience,” he said. “You can’t pick up the skill of welding just by buying one.”

I hadn’t even implied that I could, but again his negative vehemence was off-putting and surprising.

Given that I’d been pouring money into his pocket, I thought he might have said: “Great! If you need any tips or get stuck, just ask.”

But no, I’d hurt his pride by apparently suggesting than anyone could buy a welder and so be an expert.

The third category of expert to be wary of is the person who ridicules any simpler approach to solving problems at which they’re specialists.

I’ve seen this in action most recently, with my copper wire modelling approach to designing space-frame structures. The experts look at the approach and nearly choke on their cornflakes.

“You can’t work out any stress levels,” they say. “You cannot accurately model anything by that approach.”

Of course, when asked how else to design space-frames (without using engineering mathematics or complex and hard to access software), there are no answers. Apparently, it is better to simply not attempt to design and build a space-frame, rather than to do so with an approach that has huge benefits over using no aids at all.

The corollary of all of this is that experts believe you should work only in your professional field of expertise, that – in other words – no hobbies should be embraced, no amateur past-times partaken in.

When it’s put like this, you can see the mixture of vested interests, pride, and the inability to understand that expertise can be reducible, invariably results in expert denigration of non-experts attempting anything.

I’ve seen it so often over the years: not only the aforementioned boost cut over-ride, welding equipment and space-frame modelling; but also aerodynamic testing by wool-tufts and pressure measurement, intake flow testing by pressure measurement, turbo boost control using injector duty cycle as the sole input, turbo boost control using a pressure regulator, single dimensional voltage interceptors working on the airflow meter signal, making trial aero undertrays out of cheap plastic sheet or cardboard, making plastic intake ducts from stormwater pipe and fittings, forming door pods for speakers using expanded polystyrene, swapping-in springs from other cars, DIY detonation detection systems, fitting a rear anti-roll bar, using suspension on human-powered vehicles, fitting your own subwoofer, using a pot to shift a voltage signal, altering regen braking on a hybrid car – the list goes on and on.

In fact, I can state that for every innovative, DIY technique we have ever covered in AutoSpeed, at least some experts have suggested the approach would not work. But in every case the techniques have worked extremely well!

I reckon that often you can get further ahead by actively ignoring experts. That’s especially the case if the technique is one that you have devised yourself and have found to be effective…

I feel like one of the first pilots of jet-powered aircraft. They immediately knew that they were flying the future: there could be no going back to pistons and propellers.

Today I drove the car that, for me, spells the end of the piston engine for performance cars.

The car was the all-electric Tesla, and its performance – and the way it achieved that performance – was just so extraordinary that I am almost lost for words. That a start-up car company has created such a vehicle is simply unprecedented in the last century of automotive development.

For the Tesla is not just a sports car with incredible performance (0-100 km/h in the fours) but also a car that redefines driveability. Simply, it has the best throttle control of any car I have ever driven.

Trickle around a carpark at 1000 (electric) revs and the car drives like it has a maximum of just a few kilowatts available. It’s the pussy cat to end all pussy cats: Grandma could drive it with nary a concern in the world. Put your foot down a little and the car seamlessly accelerates: heavy urban traffic, just perfect.

But select an empty stretch of bitumen and mash your foot to the floor and expletives just stream from your mouth as the car launches forward with an unbelievable, seamless and simply immensely strong thrust.

There are no slipping clutches, no flaring torque converters, no revving engines, no gear-changes – just a swishing vacuum-cleaner-on-steroids noise that sweeps you towards the horizon. The acceleration off the line and up to 100 km/h or so is just mind-boggling – especially as it’s accompanied by such undemonstrative effort. The car will do it again and again and again, all with the same phenomenal ease that makes this the winner of any traffic lights grand prix you’re ever likely to meet.

And it’s not just off the line. Want to quickly swap lanes? Just think about it and it’s accomplished. 

In fact drive the car hard and you start assuming that this is the only mode – outright performance. But then enter that carpark, or keep station with other traffic, and you’re back to driving an utterly tractable car – in fact, one for whom the word ‘tractable’ is irrelevant. Combustion engines are tractable or intractable; this car’s electric motor controller just apportions its electron flow as required, in an endlessly seamless and subtle variation from zero to full power.

It’s not just the acceleration that is revolutionary. The braking – achieved primarily through regen – has the same brilliant throttle mapping, an approach that immediately allows even a newcomer to progressively brake to a near-standstill at exactly the chosen point.

A seamless, elastic and fluid power delivery that no conventional car can come remotely close to matching; a symphony on wheels to be played solely with the right foot; an utterly smooth and progressive performance than can be explosive or docile, urgent or somnambulant – literally, a driveline that completely redefines sports cars.

There’s no going back – my driving life is now changed forever.

Footnote: the Tesla drive was courtesy of Simon Hackett of the ISP, Internode.

Passive ‘steer’ systems have been in production cars for many years, normally of the rear end.

In broad brush strokes, the systems work like this: The rear bushes are set with differing stiffnesses in different planes, such that when the wheel is subjected to a lateral force (as it is in cornering), it no longer remains parallel with the car’s long axis – that is, it steers.

For example, rear wheel compliance steer is often set to give toe-in, thus settling the cornering car.

The original Mazda MX5 / Miata had such a system. (It’s worth pointing out that the MX5 is generally regarded as one of the best handling, relatively cheap, cars ever released.) In their 1989 book MX-5 – the rebirth of the sports car in the new Mazda MX5, Jack Yamaguchi and Jonathon Thompson write:

No Mazda rear suspension is complete without some form of self-correcting geometry, as have been seen in the fwd 323 and 626’s TTL (Twin Trapezoidal Links), the 929’s E-links and the RX-7’s complex DTSS. The MX-5 double wishbones are no exception, though to a lesser degree. The designers need not worry about camber changes; a recognized virtue of the unequal length A-arm suspension is the admirable ability to maintain the tires’ contact area true to the road surface, attaining a near-zero camber change.

So the chassis designers’ efforts were directed at obtaining a desired amount of toe-in attitude that improves vehicle stability in such maneuvers as spirited cornering and rapid lane changes. Toe-in was to be introduced when the suspension is subjected to lateral force, not to accelerative or braking force. They considered that the MX-5 with its configuration, weight and suspension, would have sound basic handling characteristics, and the lateral reaction would be all it would require to further enhance its vehicle dynamics.

The lower H arm’s wheel-side pivots, which carry the suspension upright, have rubber bushings of different elasticity rates. The rear pivot is on a firmer rubber bushing than the front. The front rubber bushing deforms more under load induced by lateral force, and introduces an appropriate amount of wheel toe-in, which is in the final production tune a fraction of a degree.

Pretty well all current front-wheel drive cars have some form of passive rear wheel steering. The Honda Jazz uses a tricky torsion beam rear axle in which, according to Honda, “the amount of roll steer and roll camber has been optimised to deliver steady handling”.

But even better, the company has released graphs showing the toe variation over suspension travel (note: travel, rather than lateral force), with the current model compared with the previous design. As can be clearly seen, in bump (as would occur to the outer wheel when cornering) the Jazz (especially the new model) has an increasing amount of toe-in. Also note the differing shape of the curves in rebound (droop).

And it’s not just the ostensibly non-steered end that uses toe variations built into the suspension design.

Several suspension textbooks that I have suggest that setting up the front, steering wheels for non-zero bump steer can be advantageous. Chassis Engineering by Herb Adams (incidentally, a very simple book much under-rated) states:

Exactly how much bump steer you need on your car is like most suspension settings—a compromise. It is common to set the bump steer so that the front wheels toe-out on a bump. This will make the car feel more stable, because the car will not turn any more than the driver asks.

To understand this effect, picture what would happen if your car had toe-in on bump. As the driver would start a turn, he would feed in a certain amount of steering angle. As the car built up g-forces, the chassis would roll and the outside suspension would compress in the bump direction. If the car had toe-in on bump, the front wheels would start to turn more than the driver asked and his turn radius would get tighter. This would require the driver to make a correction and upset the car’s smooth approach into the turn. The outside tire is considered in this analysis because it carries most of the weight in a turn.

Assuming that your car has the bump steer set so that there is toe-out in the bump direction, the next consideration is how much toe-out. If the car has too much toe-out in bump, the steering can become imprecise, because the suspension will tend to negate what the driver is doing with the steering wheel. Also, if there is too much bump steer, the car will dart around going down the straightaway. A reasonable amount of bump steer would be in the range of .010 to .020 per inch of suspension travel.

Fundamentals of Vehicle Dynamics by Thomas D Gillespie positively describes using roll steer, where the toe variation of the left-hand and right-hand wheel is in the same direction, to alter understeer and oversteer effects.

Even that most exotic of road cars, the McLaren F1, had designed-in passive steer.

Writing in an engineering paper released in 1993, SJ Randle wrote of the front suspension: “Lateral force steer…. was 0.15 degrees/g toe out under a load pushing the contact patch in towards the vehicle centreline. This is a mild understeer characteristic – precisely what we wanted.”

In the case of the rear suspension, “the net result being a mild oversteer characteristic (ie toe out under a force towards the car’s centreline) or around 0.2 degrees/g. We had hoped for an understeer of 0.1 degrees/g.”

Such passive steer suspension behaviour would become especially important in vehicles that, in order to achieve other design aims, have dynamic deficiencies. So for example, a very light car that is aerodynamically neutral in lift, and has a low aero drag, is likely to be susceptible to cross-winds. On bump the passive toe-in of the rear wheels, and toe-out of the front wheels, would help correct this yaw.

Note that adopting these techniques doesn’t require the actual mechanical complexity – or weight – of the suspension systems to change.

But of course it’s quite possible to over-do these effects. As indicated in the quotes above, we’re talking very small steer angle changes. You can’t even transfer the ideas from car to car: the current Honda Jazz steers fine; the Honda City (that apparently uses the Jazz rear suspension) has an unmistakeable, unhappy, ‘rear steer’ feel that is disconcerting on quick lane changes. 

But it seems to me that if you are building any bespoke vehicle and simply state point-blank that there should be no bump steer at the front, and no lateral compliance leading to toe changes at the back, you’re taking away a pretty important string from your bow.

It’s not the sort of material that you’d find anywhere else but at AutoSpeed - and, perhaps for that reason, longstanding readers will have seen much of the content before.

What the series does is integrate the testing and modification techniques that over the years I’ve discovered  to work for all cars.

Yes, all cars.

In fact, to go further than that, all vehicles.

What sort of techniques, then?

Finding the restrictions in intake systems, assessing the flow of exhausts (and exhaust components), measuring aerodynamic pressures, making visible the airflow over the surface of the vehicle, measuring on-road performance, evaluating gains and losses.

Said quickly, it all glibly rolls off the tongue.

But if instead I say: building your own huge capacity flow bench, having access to a full-size wind tunnel, and owning a dyno – well, that puts it all into a different category, doesn’t it?

People way underestimate how effective and valid simple, DIY testing on public roads can be. But all you really need is a good assistant, your car and a driving license.

Add about a hundred dollars of equipment (and you can start with literally two or three dollars of equipment!) and you can immediately be ahead of pretty well everyone else modifying cars on less than a mega dollar budget.

When I was assembling the series it occurred to me that I’ve been using many of the techniques for close on 20 years.

On cars with single turbos, two turbos, superchargers, hybrid petrol/electric drivelines, 3 cylinders, 4 cylinders, 5 cylinders, 6 cylinders and 8 cylinders. Petrol and diesel. Even on vehicles powered only by human legs.

If I am confronted with a new vehicle to modify (or develop), they’re the ideas and equipment I routinely dig out – I simply know that they’ll be effective, whatever the machine I am working on.

Yes, I think that makes them an ‘ultimate DIY modification tool kit’ for cars…

By importing the data into a spreadsheet, I can rank all our articles in terms of numbers of ratings, averaged ratings for individual articles, and so on. I can also see changes over time in the average reader ratings for specific articles.

The other day a reader proposed that, if an article suggests to people ideas they don’t want to hear, they are more likely to give it a low score. So in other words, instead of rating articles on the basis of the quality of journalism, expression, innovative ideas (etc) that are presented, they just rate it on the basis of whether or not they agree with it.

Of course, that’s fair enough – no specific criteria are given to readers as to how they should evaluate articles.

But it also gives rise to an interesting idea. In terms of new car tests, I think that, over the long-term, most readers of new car tests are those who have bought the car in question – and then are looking for confirmation that their purchase decision was a good one!

I base this on two ideas. Firstly, new car tests typically decline in averaged reader ratings over time. So a test might start off with an average of 3.7, but over time that rating invariably drops.

Secondly, the more negative the test, the more marked is the decrease in rating.

So I think that the initial batch of ratings come from people who don’t care one way or another whether the car is praised or denigrated. Then, subsequently, people doing web searches on the car (ie they are interested in the specific car and that’s why they are looking for reviews) find the stories. 

And because they either own the car (and want that reassurance their purchase was a good one) or are thinking of buying that car (and again want the reassurance that their choice is correct), the more faults found with the car in the review, the less they enjoy the story.

Our test of the Honda HRV was scathing. Reader rating score? 1.81 out of 5.

The Audi A8 3.7 we thought way overpriced and underdone. Reader score? 2.04 out of 5.

The Mitsubishi Outlander was a pretty unimpressive car. Score? 2.15.

The Saab 9.5 was terribly outdated. Score? 2.16.

Our test of the Pug 407 HDi Touring  is probably the most negative ever published. 2.25 out of 5.

That simply awful car, the Alfa 166? 2.74 out of 5. (Probably a score that goes against the trend by actually rising over time as people – including owners – finally realise what a disaster the car was.)

And the most recent – the FG Falcon – with a score of 2.87.

(All scores at the time of writing.)

In contrast, positive car tests rate typically about 3.5 – 3.6.

I won’t pretend that there aren’t exceptions to the above argument – some positive new car tests have rated poorly. But typically, what I’ve written above is the case.

I can also see another fascinating element in the article scores.

It sounds arrogant – it probably is – but I have always thought that we’ve been well ahead of the game in much of our editorial content. For example, perhaps five years ahead of everyone else in our interest in hybrid cars – eg in modifying them.

And confirmation of this is coming when we re-run certain articles. Years after they were first published, these articles are now scoring much higher reader ratings than they did when they were first released!

Why? I think that people now perceive them as more relevant.

Yes, for an editor, reader ratings make for fascinating reading…

A 2003 model AMG Mercedes Benz E55, it comes standard with a supercharged 5.4 litre, 3-valves-per-cylinder V8 boosted by a Lysholm compressor spinning at up to 23,000 rpm and pushing air through a water/air intercooler.

Peak power is 350kW at 6100 rpm, but the real whammy is in the torque – no less than 700Nm is developed from 2650 – 4500 rpm.

Initial impressions were of complexity – there are an awful lot of obscure knobs and buttons, especially on the car I drove that was fitted with options including dynamic driver and passenger seats (adds lots of controls – some automatic – for seat shape), tyre pressure control, rear sun-blinds, keyless go – and Gawd knows what else.

But having said that, the instruments and controls most often used by the driver were clear and easy – it was the next layer down… and the next, and the next… where things got complex.

Without a doubt the best aspect of the car was the engine. It hauled like the fastest freight locomotive on earth, a massive amount of torque available at whatever engine speeds you liked.

Performance? Yes, very strong – the factory 0-100 km/h is quoted as 4.6 seconds.

But the steering had that horrible Mercedes Benz slow ratio around straight-ahead (but with some lock on, good, meaty weight and feel), and the initial movement of the throttle was quite non-linear in terms of response – not much happened at first.

Ride (set at the most comfortable of three settings) was very good; handling equally so. The stability control and traction control systems were refined and effective: it was the sort of car you could throw around after only a short familiarisation.

Impressive? Yes, I think so – especially at the AUD$100,000 they now command. Impressive at the original AUD$250,000+? Perhaps proportionally less so!

If you’d like to own one, contact Paul at www.qsm.com.au – the car is currently not for sale but I am sure a deal could be done…

Although sometimes attributed to Mark Twain – because it appears in his posthumously-published Autobiography (1924) – this should more properly be ascribed to Disraeli, as indeed Twain took trouble to do: his exact words being, ‘The remark attributed to Disraeli would often apply with justice and force: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics”.’

And there are no greater ‘damned lies’ than readership or circulation figures for magazines and other publications. To give you an idea, often when a print magazine quotes ‘readership’, they triple or even quadruple their actual sales figures. Why? Because they assume each copy is read by three or four people!

In the same way – or even, come to think of, much worse ways – web sites quote all sorts of figures for their readership.

AutoSpeed’s figures are logged by Google. I can look at our daily figures, weekly figures, annual figures – or even figures for the content, section by section. Further, through internal Web Publications data, I can view readership numbers, article by article. Finally, I can also see the number of reader ratings for each article, and what those ratings are.

So I can, hand on heart and backed-up by unarguable data, say that AutoSpeed’s readership over the last year has been over 2.8 million separate visits and nearly 9 million pages.

So does that mean we have 2.8 million readers? By definition, of course!

However, to me a ‘reader’ is someone who returns frequently, reading our weekly-updated content. So, for example, someone who comes to AutoSpeed at least 50 times a year (we always have a two week break in new content over Christmas / New Year.)

And in the last year, we had over 52,000 people who returned to AutoSpeed one to two times per week (to be precise, 52 – 100 times per year).

But we also had another 38,000 who read AutoSpeed 101 – 200 times per year – an average return period of 2 – 4 days.

And we had another 32,000 who read AutoSpeed more than 201 times in that year – say every 1-2 days.

Therefore, people who read AutoSpeed more than weekly total 122,000 people, with the sampling period being the last year.

Stretch the definition to those who read AutoSpeed a little more frequently than monthly and that figure jumps to an even 250,000 people.

Include ‘about monthly’ (in actuality, 9-14 times a year) and you can add another 74,000 – the total is then 324,000 people.

These figures struck me the other day when I was viewing the latest circulation figures for the monthly Australian car magazines. Only one performance title even makes the list of the top 100 best-selling magazines in Australia (and that’s Street Machine), and it has audited monthly sales of 55,526.

Of course, those Street Machine buyers are viewing the magazine for the content published in just that issue, whereas AutoSpeed readers might be viewing anything from the last ten years of content.  But that’s the nature of our web beast – and the editorial policy that has specified from day #1 that we should make the content as timeless as possible.

I can remember when I edited a print magazine that had something like 5 per cent of the number of bi-monthly readers of AutoSpeed. It was a magazine where I could have only dreamt of covering the breadth and depth of topics we frequently write about in AutoSpeed. Simply, I could never have done the current AutoSpeed content in a national Australian print magazine: the fixed costs were too high and the potential readership far too small. 

Web Publications deserves the utmost congratulations in making available a publication that, AFAIK, is quite unique in the world. Sure, that publication has also given me a job for a decade, but look at the content and look at the readership numbers and it’s simply a genuinely impressive outcome.

Dr Simpson produced the paper that we used as the foundation for the Assessing the Alternatives article we ran about a year ago – it’s amongst the very best of articles you’ll find in deciding which fuels vehicles should be using.

Andrew Simpson has just returned to Australia from four years in the US, where he worked at the US Government National Renewable Energy Lab in Colorado, and then was a Senior R&D engineer at Tesla Motors.

I found his seminar quite riveting: it changed my views on a host of subjects relating to electric cars.

As described in the article, the advances in lithium ion battery technology and the use of ‘smart’ battery recharging, where electricity utilities can make use of low-load periods to remotely ‘turn up’ electric vehicle recharging, are both potential paradigm shifters.

But – almost in passing –  Andrew also made another point that I thought was nearly as important. Part-way through his presentation, he took his mobile phone out of his pocket and held it up.

“Here’s how we’ll be buying electric cars,” he said. “Like we currently do mobile phones.”

The uptake of mobile phone technology has been driven almost entirely by the way in which phones have been marketed – customers pay a relatively small amount upfront and then pay it off over years through the monthly bill, that comprises both call fees and capital cost repayment.

Put the ideas together of using the mobile phone marketing model with remote controlled smart recharging – and the obvious vendor of electric cars becomes the electricity utilities.

The electricity supply company can make enormously increased sales of power, all without building new infrastructure like power stations, substations and supply cabling. To encourage this increase in sales, they make available electric cars at a low upfront cost, with the monthly bill including both power charges and paying-off the cost of the car. Integration of the cost of battery replacement (should that even prove necessary) can be part of the deal.

The consumer is presented with an unbeatable offer – a new car for little money up-front, a weekly saving in motoring costs, lower greenhouse gas emissions, etc.

The electricity utility far better utilises their existing infrastructure to sell lots more power, scores ‘green’ brownie points, and diversifies their interests.

The reduction in reliance on oil and immediate environmental benefits mean government should create appropriate incentives.

Taking this approach immediately removes the requirement for consumers to be persuaded to outlay large amounts of cash on new technology of which, understandably, they will be initially suspicious. It instead uses a marketing model with which they are familiar, and – unlike mobile phones – the product (a car) is universally well recognised and understood. (If the latter seems an odd point, I can remember when people wondered why you’d ever need a mobile phone!)

I think these points are important enough to, over a relatively short period, completely alter the make-up of our car fleet.