They're small, eccentric and as quiet as Paris in August. But Britain, obsessed as it is with speed cameras and petrol prices, has unexpectedly become the world capital of electric cars.
Next week two models will be launched at the London motor show, bringing to at least six the number of carmakers competing for a slice of the emerging "zero emission" market.
None of them knows how many people may be tempted to go electric,or how the motors will develop, but all are preparing for what is being called the "battle of the bubbles."
On the surface, relations between the micro carmakers are harmonious.
"There's room for everyone. We are all helping each other," said Julian Wilford, one of a team of ex-Lotus men that has developed the Mega City Nice car. Nice is short for No Internal Combustion Engine.
The congestion charge, high price of petrol, parking incentives that some councils give for electric cars and the government's road tax exemption all mean London is at the forefront of the electric car boom, he says.
But it's the mood as much as the incentives on offer that makes Britain attractive.
"People have talked about electric cars for years without anything happening, but now it is all changing," Wilford said.
"We find a lot of people who are really concerned about sustainability and who want genuinely different solutions. The mainstream car companies just can't deliver that," he said.
The Nice, built in France, can range about 80km on one charge, claims to reach nearly 64kph and believes it is the cheapest electric car to own and to run.
Also launching in London next week is the Smart EV. This is the battery version of the minuscule petrol car which has sold more than 40,000 models since 1998 and still attracts stares. But the maker says that its model is far higher up the evolutionary ladder.
"These [others] are not cars," said Jeremy Simpson of Daimler Chrysler, which owns Mercedes and Smart cars.
"They are officially classed as quadricycles. They don't have to meet the same standards as we do. People reject them because they are ... odd. Ours is iconic, a proper car," he said.
The electric Smart may be flea-like, but Mr Simpson says it does 0kph to 48kph in 6.5 seconds.
The snag is that the Smart EV won't actually be for sale. The company hopes to lease them mainly to large companies wanting to use them as pool cars.
But the talk in electric vehicle circles is of supercars now emerging in California. The founders of Google have invested heavily in the Silicon Valley startup Tesla Motors, which will soon launch its first model.
Taiwanese firms have increased investment in the Philippines in recent years as Manila’s ties with Washington deepen and global supply chains continue to shift away from China, an expert at the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The Philippines had not been among Taiwanese investors’ top choices in Southeast Asia, CIER Taiwan ASEAN Studies Center director Kristy Hsu (徐遵慈) said at a seminar in Taipei. However, Taiwan’s investment in the country has grown significantly since the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching US $257 million last year, a high in recent years, she said. Although Taiwan’s total investment in the Philippines still lags
Intel Corp regards Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) as a longstanding partner, as the US chipmaker would continue outsourcing production of advanced chips to TSMC, Intel chief executive officer Lip-Bu Tan (陳立武) said yesterday. “I don’t look at people as competitors. I look at the collaboration... Nvidia is also, you know, a good friend,” Tan told a news conference following his keynote speech at the Computex trade show in Taipei. “It’s a very trusted partnership for us... We are a big, top customer for them, and we’re going to continue doing that,” he said, referring to TSMC, the world’s largest foundry
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday said it would work with US chipmaker Intel Corp to jointly develop and deploy next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure and intelligent computing platforms in a move to capture booming demand for AI computing systems. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康), said in a statement that the partnership would combine its global manufacturing scale, system integration expertise and AI data center deployment capabilities with Intel’s strengths in processor architecture, silicon technologies and software ecosystem. The companies said they plan to work on equipment used in AI data centers, including server racks powered by
Artificial intelligence (AI) agents would supplant smartphones as the center of people’s digital lives, fundamentally reshaping personal devices and driving a major computing upgrade cycle, Qualcomm Inc CEO Cristiano Amon said yesterday. In his keynote speech for this year’s Computex trade show in Taipei, Amon said that the rise of "agentic AI" — AI systems capable of reasoning, planning and carrying out tasks autonomously — would transform how people interact with technology across phones, PCs, vehicles and wearable devices. Describing the technology as the next major evolution in computing, Amon said that "2026 is the year of agents.” For decades, smartphones have sat
RSS