This interesting article appeared in today's Telegraph BusinessClub (sorry article only available to registered members so I have copied it here).
If you live and work in London then you could park for free and legally avoid the congestion charge by buying a G-Wiz electric car. They cost £8,500 but you could save more than this in a year on these charges. Perhaps Lud should take note.
Are we a little green or just not switched on?
Keith Johnston bangs the drum for environmentally friendly electric cars, but he needs fellow travellers. David Sumner Smith reports.
The electric-powered G-Wiz is a far cry from the Porsche 911 cabriolet that Keith Johnston used to own. With its modest top speed of 45mph, 48-mile range and dumpy, babyish looks, the G-Wiz fan club is limited to just one person: London mayor Ken Livingstone.
The politician and the serial entrepreneur are both convinced that petrol and diesel-powered vehicles are nearing the end of the road. But while one wants to protect the environment, the other wants to build a profitable business. ?I?m not some doey-eyed eco-warrior,? says Mr Johnston, managing director of Southall-based GoinGreen. ?We are here to make money.?
With four previous successful start-ups to his name and a victory for GoinGreen in the 2004 Startup Awards, Mr Johnston has the credentials for success. So too do the company?s founders: Nick Hewson was co-founder and chairman of Grantchester and Steve Cain was chief executive of Carlton Communications.
The founders encountered a prototype of the Californian-designed electric car four years ago when travelling in India. Knowing electric vehicles would be exempt from the congestion charges about to be applied in London, they successfully bid for UK import rights and won first refusal on rights to sales in mainland Europe.
Having tested the safety of the G-Wiz and secured pan-European Type Approval, they head-hunted Mr Johnston, handed him ?the keys to the business? and retired into the background as non-executive directors. Initial plans to supply the G-Wiz to clients on lease terms were promptly shelved. Having initially agreed to provide grant support for leasing contracts, the Energy Savings Trust promptly ran out of funds.
The revised business model developed by Mr Johnston is as different from the motor retail norm as the G-Wiz is from his old Porsche. ?Low cost is imperative,? he says. ?We import directly from Reva cars in India and sell direct to customers without any dealers to add their margin.? There are no expensive showrooms either. The G-Wiz is marketed through the GoinGreen.co.uk website, where prospective customers can book a test drive.
?We don?t employ traditional car salesmen either,? explains Mr Johnston. ?The test drives are operated by environmental science graduates. They are very passionate about environmental protection and achieve very high conversion rates with sales prospects.? The website allows customers to order direct and pay by credit card.
Premises are basic and staff numbers minimal. Three staff work handle sales, three technicians prepare the cars for delivery and four engineers provide mobile servicing.
The strategy appears to be working. More than 550 examples of the G-Wiz are already on the road. Sales rose from £966,000 in the year ending June 2005 to £2.5m 12 months later and the firm is now approaching breakeven. But neither the founders nor investment firm Renewal Capital, who took a 20pc stake in the company in July, have yet seen any return on their investment. Many serious challenges still remain.
The sales proposition for the G-Wiz is attractive to Londoners. Councils in Westminster and the City exempt such cars from parking charges, saving their owners up to £6,000 each year.
It is also exempt from the £8 daily congestion charge and ranks in the lowest groups for insurance and company car tax, so the savings can recoup the £8,500 purchase price in just a year.
By the end of next year, however, old-tech lead-acid batteries will be overtaken by lithium-ion or other technology which has four times as much ?energy density?. This will enable electric powered vehicles to run at speeds of up to 75mph and travel 100 miles before re-charging is needed. But to some eyes, even more advanced electric powered vehicles will not wean motorists out of their fossil-fuel-powered cars.
So GoinGreen has to hedge its bets. As a stop-gap to satisfy customers who need greater range, it has started selling Smart cars powered by liquefied petroleum gas. It will soon offer modified versions of the Toyota Prius hybrid reportedly capable of up to 130mpg thanks to lithium-ion battery power.
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Roger
I read frequently, but only post when I have something useful to say.
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Bamber Gascoigne has one too apparently. HJ says though that they are fragile, and all the examples he sees have visible damage on them.
Obviously electric cars make some sort of sense as urban runabouts. But I don't fancy a Gwhiz. They are too small and look terrible. I imagine the suspension would be extremely crude, when what is needed in London these days is something that renders speed bumps imperceptible.
And even supposing I could afford to buy one of the things, I don't have an off-road parking space where it could be recharged. However in five or ten years there may be something tolerable in the electric car category.
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It has 40 mile limit, so it's strictly to and from work - no use to those who actually move around CC zone and need to park in different spots all the time. And it costs £8000 and some change! You would have to be paying CC and parking for £24 a day every working day of the year for it to return its price as suggested in article. And that's if you actually have a driveway or garage to recharge it, otherwise it's running around the hood with extension leads.
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[Nissan 2.2 dCi are NOT Renault engines. Grrr...]
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"it has started selling Smart cars powered by liquefied petroleum gas"
This actually makes more sense - none of the problems associated with G wizz and still CC exempt.
If the conversion doesn't affect the smart warranty I know which I would have.
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I've seen one of these G-Wiz electric cars around my area of sheffield. Everytime I see it my mouth drops since it is a joke car. Mini's and those little Smarts have little practicality, but everyone goes out to buy them because they amke a style statement, these G-Wiz cars on the other hand......
The one I see has christain logos on it and have seen it parked outside my local church. It is nice to see someone answering the question 'What car would jesus buy?' and then have the conviction to go out and buy it. Too many people preach one thing and do the other. For us lesser mortals why on earth would anyone want one??? - Get a fiat panda diesel, less expensive and considering whole life pollution effects cleaner as well.
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Torque means nothing without RPM
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I often see these pathetic contraptions parked up around town with their mains voltage charging leads draped over the pavement (not sure on the legality of that, let alone HSE), and am VERY tempted to 'trip' on the lead and 'accidentally' unplug the wretched little things.
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They have rear seats, I saw one with a kid in the back. If a motorbike hit it would be nasty, good idea ahead of its time.
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Bamber Gascoigne was on TV in his G-Wiz last week, it looked like one of those old invalid carriages from yesteryear, you know, the type that allowed a wheelchair access through the rear, absolutely hideous looking contraption. I certainly wouldn't feel safe in one.
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Ford's "Think" car (which one major firm used to hire out in Central London) would be a better prospect than G-Wiz. It was a fairly common site in London a few years ago but the cars were only available on a lease basis.
Pity that Ford scrapped the project and sold its share in Think (Think was, maybe still is, a Norwegian manufacturer of electric cars) when it ran into cash problems.
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Can anyone explain to me exactly how "green" it is to design something that causes masses of pollution to manufacture and then spends it's whole life plugged into a wall socket which is powered mainly by coal and gas power stations?
Roll on the development of new wave Nuclear I suppose, it's the only way these things could viably claim to be green.
Blue
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