Pledge “carsockets”
"I will ask my local council to install electric points on the pavement so that people in my street can switch to electric cars but only if 10 other Londoners will do the same."
— john-paul flintoff, resident of Childs Hill, north London
Deadline to sign up by: 12th August 2005
10 people signed up
Country: United Kingdom
Postcode area: W1 (view map)
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Global oil supplies are running out, not least because of thirsty cars. The price of petrol has shot past £4 a gallon in some places.
Electric cars - not hybrids - run for a WHOLE YEAR on about £45 of electricity from an ordinary socket. That's the same price as a single tank of petrol.
Oh, and they don't produce harmful emissions.
The cars available from www.goingreen.co.uk have four seats and storage in the bonnet. They're as small as Smart cars and cost as little as £7,000. If you haven't heard of them that's because they don't advertise and rely on word-of-mouth.
The most amazing thing about these electric cars is that they do not incur road tax, they're in the cheapest possible insurance bracket, and they're not liable to the congestion charge. In Westminster you can park at several car parks and in pay-and-display spaces for NOTHING.
Being rather sick of paying for petrol, parking fines and the congestion charge - not to mention my worries about the environment and an impending energy crisis - I would trade in my VW Golf at once. But there's a problem.
Unless councils install sockets on the pavement for would-be buyers (as the council in Chiswick recently did) the only people who can run an electric car are the the lucky few with off-street parking.
After all, you can hardly run cables across the pavement and through the front window of your terraced house...
