High performance electric cars are on the grid

Although electric cars are increasingly popular with environmentally-conscious urban commuters, their low speeds, boxy shapes and long charge times have done little to make the Jeremy Clarksons of the world ditch their ‘milk float’ gags and dash down to the showroom.

This could be about to change however, thanks to a number of projects, at varying stages of development, that promise a new generation of battery-powered cars with Ferrari-style performance. Also, in a gratifying thumbs-up for UK automotive engineering expertise, three of the most significant of these projects draw heavily on home-grown talent.

The closest to production is the US-developed Tesla Roadster, a $98,000 (£48,000) all-electric sports car that goes from 0-60 in four seconds, travels more than 200 miles between charges, and boasts a waiting list that reads like a Who’s Who of Hollywood high society.

With early prototypes of the vehicle causing a stir and the first production models expected to roll out of the factory later this year, the car has a list of celebrity admirers, including Matt Damon and George Clooney.

Headed by PayPal founder Elon Musk, the small Californian company behind the vehicle, Tesla Motors, plans 800 Roadsters this year and hopes to reach peak production of 2,000 in 2008.

If the car looks somewhat familiar to UK sports car enthusiasts that’s because it shares its chassis and a number of other components with the Lotus Elise. Lotus Engineering will also be in charge of assembling the vehicle at its Hethel, Norfolk, headquarters. However, any similarities to the UK-designed Elise end under the bonnet.

Powered by a bundle of 6,831 lithium-ion laptop batteries, the Tesla produces a tenth of the pollution and is said to be six times as efficient as the best sports cars. It can be charged from any wall outlet in three to four hours. It has a top speed of 130mph thanks to a powerful 185kW, three-phase, four-pole AC induction motor that can spin up to 13,000 rpm and is claimed to be up to 95 per cent efficient.

The company has so much faith in its energy storage system that it has created another division, Tesla Energy, which is licensing the technology to other manufacturers. It recently signed up its first customer, Think Nordic — a Norwegian producer of small city cars.

On board the Tesla, all of these systems are constantly supervised by an electronic control module that regulates motor torque, charging, and regenerative braking, as well as monitoring such things as the voltage delivered by the ESS, the speed of rotation of the motor, and the temperatures of the motor and power electronics.

In an intriguing hint at a future era of affordable electric motoring, Tesla says it is also developing a five-passenger sedan that will cost about $55,000 and, ultimately, a $30,000 electric car codenamed Blue Star.

But although the Tesla is by far and away the closest high-performance electric car to production, it could soon be followed by a UK pretender.

Announced in a blaze of publicity several months ago, the Lightning GT is a UK-developed electric sports car that could go into production next year.

The vehicle, which is expected to begin track testing this year, has been developed by Peterborough’s Lightning Car company, a specialist manufacturer of luxury sports cars whose engineers have worked for, among others, McLaren, Lola, Ronart and Vanwall. The company claims to have resolved the problems of battery life, power density, range and acceleration that have dogged previous electric car efforts.