What's your problem with electric cars?

HELPDESK:Answering your motoring queries

From RC:

The coverage of electric cars on the Motors pages would suggest you and your team are reluctant to welcome the arrival of these cars. As someone considering a move to electric when I next change, what are your problems with these cars, apart of course from the usual petrolhead nonsense?

I have no problems with electric cars or the technology behind them. They are easy to drive and though they lack the throaty rasp of a petrol engine they can be tuned to offer as much performance as you need, or even a throaty rasp soundtrack if that’s what your heart desires.

And like combustion engines, there is the chance to trade fuel economy (or for electric cars, its range between charges) for performance. Consider the Tesla sports car, for example.

There need not be any trade-off in terms of handling either. If an electric car is developed from the ground up, it can, theoretically, boast fantastic handling because the heavy battery packs can be placed under the floor, thereby lowering the centre of gravity. In short, petrolheads have nothing to worry about from the electric car era.

The reason I have reservations about purchasing them at present is mainly down to qualms I have about the prices of these cars at present and technological redundancy.

Developments in combustion engine technologies over the last few decades have largely been incremental and evolutionary. Electric car technology, however, is likely to improve in leaps and bounds, even over the next five years.

Advocates suggest a similar evolution that occurred with the mobile phone and computers. So as the range improves and battery packs shrink, the new crop of electric cars on sale in 2015 could be radically better than any initial offerings.

When new technology comes to market – be it the PC or the iPod – technological redundancy increases and it takes time to settle back into an era of evolution over revolution. For early adopters, revolution is their buzz and they’re prepared to pay. But in the case of electric cars that will mean spending €30,000 or more on one of the current crop. It’s one thing to buy a €2,000 laptop that’s outdated within five years, but another when the outlay is in the tens of thousands and from a household budget.

What could have softened that blow would have been if the car firms had agreed to lease the batteries, allowing owners to replace them with newer versions with better range as they were introduced, thereby keeping the car up to date. Instead owners must buy the car outright and suffer the inherent risk of redundancy as batteries improve.

Send your queries to Motors Helpdesk, The Irish Times, Tara Street, Dublin 2, or e-mail motorshelp@irishtimes.com