The small plastic car you're looking at is the Renault Twizy.
It is according to Renault a solution to congestion, pollution, and all your urban motoring woes.
Why is it?
You see the Nissan LEAF was launched over a year ago after years of hype to critical acclaim.
It's become the byword for electric cars much as the Toyota Prius did for hybrid.
The thing is though it's just a normal family car that looks a little bit like a spade and is most often specked in blue and there's only
one interior color, beige, beige.
The LEAF is still quite big and that's not good because it means our nation's roads is still full of big congestion-causing cars.
And that's why pretty much every manufacturer under the sun has conceptualized a car like the Twizy.
You see the idea is it's the ultimate urban runaround for young people to dot through traffic and turn around town in, but there's a problem with it.
Well, actually there are several.
Firstly there's a
problem of going around it many times all to the pub.
You see the driver will stay sober as a judge naturally.
However its passenger can get as squiffy as they like, but getting in the back is a little bit tricky.
So imagine a little bit of gymnastics with a gut full of Malibu.
The driver is gonna be picking chunks out of his hair for quite some time.
Secondly he's going to the shops.
You see there's none of all that much storage space back there so your weekly shop will have to sit on your very hung-over passenger like a kind of nauseous
version of a singly shelf.
And that leaves us the third and final problem and it's not just a problem with the Twizy but with electric cars in general.
You see cars like the Twizy isn't for young and funky people living in the city and unless you mint it you're gonna be living in a flat, and that means to 2 problems.
One, if there's 10 people the entire block where are you gonna put them all and two, there's only one charge point.
How are you gonna keep them all juiced?
Or we allow buildings to begin sprouting flecks-covered dreadlocks, that can't
be safe, can it?
The Twizy can offer 60 miles of range and up to 50 miles an hour.
And it only weighs 450 kilos but it still takes 3-1/2 hours to charge.
To see you got 10 Twizys and 1 charge point.
What's gonna happen there?
That said, the Twizy is a rather cool-looking car.
I'd have one if I have somewhere to charge it.
It's fun, it's quick, it's clean and it certainly can cause the hell out of all of London's bikers.
But does Britain have the infrastructure to support a
million-billion of these things?
No.
It doesn't need it or anywhere else for that matter.
Electric motoring is still in its infancy even though it existed over a century ago.
One day we may all be giggling about in Twizys but we need more charge points, better battery tech, and maybe some proper doors.
To get those though, more people need to get in electric cars.
