Your column has correctly picked up on one of the fallacies of electric cars and you are the only writer that I can find that has told the truth about the disastrous effects on range that heating an electric car has. Maybe you would like to let readers know a few more facts?

Let us take the new Nissan Leaf. Firstly, the 100 or so miles of range is indeed severely reduced if you use the climate control (heating and cooling). Secondly, the range is further reduced if you carry passengers and luggage. Thirdly, the range is further reduced at higher driving speeds. Fourthly, the range is reduced significantly if you are in a hilly area. Fifthly, the range is much reduced if you drive briskly. In all, you are most unlikely to get anywhere near 100 miles in real life and as the battery deteriorates from day one, that achieved range will steadily decrease as the months go by.

The new car is an eye watering £31,000 with a plastic finish that Kia and Hyundai put to shame. To make matters worse, the British taxpayer gives Nissan Japan (the first 1,200 cars seem to coming from Japan) a cool £5,000 for each car they sell (bringing the retail price down to £26,000). And we are seeing libraries close and our police struggling? To charge the car in less than the 10 or so hours as standard means buying a £1,000 charger from British Gas and facing a further charge for installation. This car cannot utilise the planned 'non contact' under tarmac charging systems. New batteries, estimated to last maybe six or seven years, will cost £8,000 at today's rates. And is it Green? No, it is not. To fully charge the batteries will release some 14,000/15,000g of CO2 into the atmosphere (based on Defra's average figure of 530g/Kw.hour and 15% loss on the grid and in the battery chargers).

All these electric cars do is to move the geographical point of pollution a few miles down the road to power stations (some of which generate as much as 1,000g of CO2 for every Kw. hour of electrical power they produce). Given a realistic range of, say, 60/70 miles per charge, this generates around 200g/mile of CO2. Or around 120g/km (assuming 70 mile range) I am sure that you know of a large number of cars that do a lot better than that. To complete the depressing package, this car is forecast to depreciate (as with all EVs) at a frightening rate. Add funding into the equation, and you have one very expensive, highly polluting, smallish family car. And we are all being FORCED to fund £5,000 of it for the wealthy rich who can afford such a ludicrous purchase.