Today, Ian looks back on Episode 4 and in particular the electric cars featured on the show.
Tonight's show featured a huge amount of really great stuff. I watch the Twitter feed for the show as it's airing, and the audience loved most of the same things I did. I thought the remote control horse was outstanding, and the sausage roll cannon just hilarious. Our builds team really knows how to entertain the nation!
The main part of the show I was involved in this week was, however, electric cars. Now, I'm a car nut, so this one was right up my street. The problem is, as much as I want to love electric cars, they are fraught with problems.
But before I talk about them more generally, I should tell you about how the cars were to drive. I started off pootling around in the Smart. This is a car that has basically been retro-fitted with a motor and battery. I personally think this is a stupid idea, because cars only ever work well when they are purpose-built for their main task. It was basically no fun to drive, had a rubbish range, and is too small.
The Peugeot Ion was a little better, but the interior is truly nasty. These cars aren't cheap to buy, but sitting in the Ion made me think it cost £3. Bendy panels here, nasty fabric there. I realise there's more to cars then just the quality of the interior, but most of us spend hundreds of hours in our cars, is it too much to expect them to be nice?
So the clear winner was the Nissan Leaf. Going back to what I said earlier, here is a car that actually feels like a premium product. And that's because it was built from the ground-up as an electric car. It's got a nice, well-built interior, and it's got lots of decent technology to keep you entertained. It also has power, well, enough to confuse people in to thinking it's a petrol engine. If only it had a range of 400 miles, not 100, it would be the ideal car.
What's strange is that the Leaf costs about £31,000 and the Ion costs £33,000. And given how nice the Leaf is, and how cheap the Ion feels, that's frankly amazing. So if you were going to pick one of those electric vehicles, my vote is very much for the Leaf!
