Steve Cropley: My week in a Fiat 500e was electric Car News

Wednesday

I can’t help but feel a flash of joy over Gridserve’s acquisition of the electric motorway from Ecotricity, the unreliable serial UK motorway charging network. Dale Vince, founder of Ecotricity, deserves a lot of praise for helping to start the electric vehicle revolution 10 years ago, but the truth is, he never really satisfied the customer. My own use of electric cars depends mainly on charging at home and on the highway, so journeys have always had a fairly high degree of risk. The new owner of Electric Highway says he has already upgraded 20 sites and the coverage “is going to be impressive.” It’s amazing to me that such a movement has taken so long to come.

Thursday

Like hacks, our lives are teeming with bartender press releases joining together to reveal something new about what the public thinks about electric cars. The newest and strangest is from a company whose stated goal is to “accelerate mass adoption of electric mobility,” but it cites research to show that two-thirds of motorists believe 2052 would be a better date to end sales of gasoline and diesel cars than 2030, which the government has chosen. I wonder where the clipboard merchants found so many Luddits, and why a forward-looking company noticed them. The title didn’t say “Let them do it after I die”, but it might as well have done it.

Friday

I enjoyed a quick half-day outing in the new Renault Arkana fastback hybrid SUV, which begins both a new campaign of electrified model launches for the brand and a highly reported assault on the thriving C-segment. of the automotive market. I suspect I was the only participant crisp enough to think such thoughts, but the Arkana made me think of the much admired Renault 16 and do-it-all from the 1970s. (Yes, I went to the launch of this also.) Reassuring to see a great brand continue to do what they have always done well.

And something else…