Frinia Cars And Trucks.

Driving an electric car in London can save you over £4,500 a year. That's enough to buy a decent, low mileage Ford Fiesta or a Fiat Panda.More people are realising though that electric cars aren't just gutless eco wagons fuelled by falafel munching tree huggers. Electric cars are exempt from road tax and the London congestion charge, enjoy free parking in many areas, have low insurance costs and of course absolutely no petrol or diesel costs, so they might be worth looking at after all!

Until the choice of technology settles down though, you might be best advised looking at contract hire for an electric vehicle rather than parting with your hard earned cash outright.You don’t have to go horribly down market either to go electric.Many leading luxury marques are plugging into the electric bandwagon.  Audi contract hire on something like the all-electric Audi A1 compact hatchback may be a better bet for the time being.20 of these beasts will be tested on the streets of Munich by mid 2011 supported by 200 ‘electric filling stations’.Capable of a top speed of 81 mph thanks to a hefty under floor lithium-ion battery pack, the electric A1 Audi also uses a small, single-rotor Wankel rotary engine as a “range extender” producing an additional 15 kW of charging power. Audi calculate that will deliver ‘fuel economy’ equivalent to 148.7 mpg.

BMW too has ripped the gas-guzzling heart from one of its most iconic models, replaced it with batteries and an electric motor and called it the Mini E. Prices for final retail models remain unconfirmed, so BMW contract hire may be the more judicious approach here too.   The Mini E manages to deliver an impressive performance (thanks to an enormous battery pack) to reach a top speed of 95 mph and a whopping 155-mile range, but with space for only one passenger. The Mini E is unavailable at the moment, but a second six-month trial is scheduled from September 2010, so watch this space!