Fresh air fare

A California taxi firm is the first business in the US to use electric cars that can run for 100 miles on a single charge.

The company has bought cars that use large-scale lithium-ion batteries, making it the first business to meet California’s standard for emission-free driving — the toughest in the US.

The batteries are produced by Valence Technology for production cars built by Californian manufacturer Phoenix Motorcars. Valence’s business development manager Marc Kohler said that meeting the Californian standard ‘was a driving decision for them to come to us’.

Five of the world’s seven largest car manufacturers are currently working with the company to launch production cars that use its Saphion battery.

Hybrid and battery-powered cars have been slow to win mainstream popularity because the most flexible type of batteries — lithium-ion — can explode. Car manufacturers have been stuck with nickel and lead-acid batteries, which have been largely replaced by lithium-ion batteries in laptops and mobile phones as the latter have higher energy densities.