Chris, you're living in a bit of a dream world with regards to electric cars. You physically can't fit enough batteries into a smart to get more then 80miles to a charge (which takes 6hours). They are just too big and heavy, and in Lithium Ion's case, dangerous too.
Even if batteries only cost £5k, thats significantly more then a petrol or diesel engine costs to manufacturer. The Smart ForTwo only costs £6k altogether!
I'm at loss to understand why you think electricity would not increase in price if everyone started plugging there cars in as well and solar farms, in the UK!
I don't disagree with you that the future is electric cars (in some guise). But the future is not here yet. Public opinion is shifting but it isn't ready for fully electric mainstream cars, even if they were great. It has to be a gradual change, from mild hybrids, to full blown hybrids to series hybrids to full electric cars. Other then the prius (which is series-parallel) we are currently entering the mild hybrid period and we're seeing concepts of series hybrids (GM Volt).
Anyway the future is unlikely to be full electric battery. Oil companies want you to continue buying from forecourts so hydrogen fuel cells will win that war. But on a positive note, according my project supervisor (we are working on a fuel cell bus) 20,000 wind generators would be enough to create the hydrogen necessary to power all of britains cars if they all went fuel cell.
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