I’ve just seen the Renault ad suggesting that running a car on petrol was as mad as running a small electronic device on petrol. It’s at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKg-LPOXIMs.

It’s a clever ad, but my comments:.

• The comparison is not valid for many reasons. We need to deal with a number of problems before electricity becomes as good a fuel source for a large high power portable application like a car. Petrol is incredibly energy dense and currently readily available.

• One day maybe soon we could be running small devices on fuel cells, so putting a small amount of liquid fuel into your calculator may not be so far fetched.

Maybe Electricity is coming for cars. We’ve seen other traditionally petrol based system such as model aircraft move to electricity as battery technology has improved. Has battery and motor technology reached the point where an all electric car can perform well enough and be environmentally friendly in terms of cost to make and dispose?