Electric Vehicles

It's all very well owning an electric car when you have a drive or a garage. Plugging in is no problem. But what if you have to park on the street? It's an infrastructure nightmare that will have to be faced in the next decade by towns and cites across the world.....

Ban all those petrol and diesel cars! In a supreme exercise in wishful thinking the British government has announced that after 2040 no new internal-combustion cars will be sold. Mike has already been there, done that and he has just a few reservations.....

What do you think is the most important invention of the current century? Could it be the iPhone, the Nissan Leaf or the Nintendo Wii? Or, perhaps, the iPad?

For the past twelve months I've been testing a Nissan Leaf, the all-electric motoring solution. Surprisingly, not only is it supremely quiet and economical, charged from my home port, it is fast, comfortable and very refined. In fact, it feels like a small limousine, considerably more refined even than an equivalent Audi A3 or VW Golf. I would buy an electric car in a heartbeat if it weren't for one snag: Range.

As from this morning, drivers in the United Kingdom have a clearer view of the road. Gone is the round tax disc that motorists have had to display for the past ninety years. Instead, authorities will now rely on roadside cameras to read number plates and check with the national database. Police officers can check that a car is insured and taxed just by feeding the licence number into the computer.

With a levelling of taxes and recognition of the low cost of ebook production, prices will find their own level. It is patently obvious that physical books must eventually cost more than ebooks. If people wish to live in the past and surround themselves with books instead of a Kindle full of digital files then they must be prepared to pay for their preference.