Nissan Leaf electric car to cost £10,000 more than a Golf Bluemotion

The Nissan Leaf, the world’s first mass-market electric car, will offer significant environmental advantages over conventional vehicles, but is to cost £28,350 when it goes on sale in Britain early next year – £10,000 more than a similarly-sized clean diesel such as the VW Golf Bluemotion.

If the government honours its commitment to offer £5,000 grants for electric cars from January 2011, the price of the Leaf will drop to £23,350, but there will be no battery leasing scheme to spread the cost of ownership.

The Nissan Leaf will use no more than a few pence worth of electricity per mile and servicing costs are expected to be 15% lower than for a similarly-sized petrol or diesel car, but depreciation costs are not yet known.

A spokesperson for the Environmental Transport Association (ETA) said: “If one’s only criterion when buying a car is cost, then cutting-edge green technology is bound to seem expensive. Thankfully there will be customers today willing to invest in vehicles like the Nissan Leaf so that its technology can become widespread.”

Electric car CO2 emissions

Electric cars offer significant environmental benefits over internal combustion engined-cars, but the term ‘zero emissions’ can be misleading. Even though electric cars have no exhaust pipe, the power they use has to come from somewhere and this can cause pollution.

It is possible to buy electricity from a 100 per cent renewable supplier such as www.good-energy.co.uk, but the major suppliers use a mix. Going Green, the distributor of the G-Wiz electric vehicle estimates that its two-seater uses the equivalent of 64g CO2 per km if you buy from a regular supplier representing the average mix of electricity production in Britain.

It is likely to be years before electric cars stand a chance of joining the mainstream. In the meantime, car makers are optimizing the efficiency of the internal combustion engine. A clean diesel car such as the Golf Bluemotion, is fitted with a diesel particulate filter (DPF) that removes all trace of particulates from the exhaust. The Golf BlueMotion delivers 68.9mpg with CO2 emissions of 107g/km.

• £5,000 grants for electric cars launch January 2011

• Electric car recharging will be wireless