A day in the life of a London electric car station

In the 21st century, where a working flying car exists, it seems strange that we are still waiting for auto­mobiles powered by clean energy to enter the motoring mainstream. Last year in the US, for example, the world's second-biggest car market, electrics and plug-in hybrids accounted for just 0.7 per cent of light vehicle sales. Yet my own doubts concerning the future of the electric car were temporarily cast aside one recent weekday afternoon when, at a west London car park, Georg Ell showed me his ride.

The Tesla Model S, an electric, connected car that has run rings around the competition since its launch in Britain last year, can go from nought-to-60mph in 3.1 noiseless seconds - "Blowing everything out of the water," according to Ell, 34, who has been given the task of turning the UK into the Tesla's third-biggest market behind the US and China. "It's faster than a lot of other sports cars, including the Ferrari 458, the McLaren MP4-12c and most Porsche 911s - so, not bad for an electric!"

As Ell approached the driver's door with a Tesla car-shaped key in his pocket, the car woke up automatically, retractable door handles sliding out to greet our hands. Inside there are no knobs or dials, just a central touch screen that allows you to control the height of the suspension and plot routes by satnav. The car also remembers driver profiles, so it can automatically adjust the seats as you like them, call up your favourite playlists, and so on.

I asked Ell whether Tesla was as much a tech company as a carmaker. "Yes, for sure, both in how we operate and also culturally, from a leadership perspective," he replied, citing his background in software and tech start-ups, like many of his colleagues. (A few days after our meeting, Elon Musk, the 43-year-old tech entrepreneur and co-founder of Tesla, announced the company's entry into the home battery market, a move he claimed could change the "entire energy infrastructure of the world".)

"We are constantly improving the car with incremental software updates," Ell went on. "Soon we will be able to deliver autopilot driving capabilities - for example, self-parking and lane-keeping are coming this summer. Longer term, the car will be able to drive without manual intervention on the steering wheel. We've already tested this on a route from San Francisco to Seattle, and for the majority of that journey, it worked."

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Unlike nearly all electric car drivers, those behind the wheel of a Tesla are untroubled by "range anxiety", the fear of running out of juice. There are three battery options, Ell explained, the highest spec giving you a 310-mile range. At a 32-amp UK public charging point, the Tesla will require 15 hours for a full charge, half that for a high-output Tesla home charger.

Teslas don't come cheap - the Model S starts at around $65,000 (or £55,000 in the UK). While the company initially seeded its vehicles among rich, trendy Californians, it is now finding new ways to produce batteries more affordably and edging towards practicality. The Model 3, due to enter production in 2017, will be aimed at the mass market and will cost around $35,000.

"Elon [Musk] thinks it will be his iPhone moment," said Steve Levine, author of The Powerhouse: Inside the Invention of a Battery to Save the World (2015). "Tesla has validated the electric car, and the major traditional car manufacturers are running scared - they know that they need to act quickly."

He added: "The number of consumers buying electrics to be green or cool is limited. But along with Tesla, BMW, Volkswagen and General Motors are now developing mass-market electrics at the right price point for Americans - between $30,000 and $35,000. When all the new models come out in 2018, it will be a pivotal time for electrics. It will be the industry's moment of truth."

. . .

The numbers vary slightly, but around 3 per cent of road users in the UK drive electrics or hybrid plug-ins. The vast majority of these vehicles have a significantly lower battery life than a Tesla Model S. For these drivers, range anxiety is a very real problem.

Though advocates of electric cars claim that electricity is everywhere, that there are millions of outlets, many of those power points are tucked away behind sofas, and pretty inaccessible to road users. As in most major cities, around three-quarters of parking in London is on-street rather than in driveways or garages. Drivers of electric cars have to rely on a public network of 1,500 charging points spread over 900 terminals on 300 sites.

Does it work? On a recent weekday morning, I walked to the nearest charging point to my home in Camberwell, southeast London, but it was out of service. So was the next one I visited, around half a mile away. This shouldn't have been surprising. A survey of the live online network map would have revealed those that were available, already in use, or out of service. In some areas, the number of broken points outnumbers those working. It is not uncommon for around 40 per cent of London's charging stations to be out of service at any one time.

"The network isn't in perfect shape. The electric car industry, still relatively new to London, is years and years away from that. But we are heading in the right direction," said Erik Fairbairn, the 38-year-old chief executive of POD Point, which manufactures and installs, at a cost of £1,000 each, some of London's public charging stations. The company was founded in 2009 and, according to Fairbairn, achieved 136 per cent growth in terms of turnover from last year. "Still," he added, "the challenge of cracking London is one of immense complexity."

Fairbairn was referring to the piecemeal manner in which the electric vehicle charging network has been assembled and managed. Transport for London set it up at the instruction of Boris Johnson, mayor of London, in May 2011. But the scheme never really took off. It was marred by uncertainty and disagreements between various interested parties - among them the operator of the service, 27 London boroughs and 39 private partners, including charge point manufacturers and car park operators - over who was responsible for maintaining the network.

In early September 2014, Bluepoint London, a subsidiary of French industrial giant Bollore, took over the infrastructure network, known as Source London, in a deal worth £1m. Bollore had ambitions to more than quadruple the number of battery-charging outlets in the capital to 6,000 by 2018, as well as launching a car-sharing service run by a separate part of the group. Bluepoint is now in negotiations with each London borough that would enable it to take control of charge point maintenance and set up round-the-clock support for the network. It will be a long process: so far, just four boroughs have signed up.

In recent years, however, schemes encouraging car-sharing and electric fleets have had some success: in Paris, Bollore's Autolib network now includes some 3,000 electric vehicles served by 871 charging stations dotted around the city. Launched as a complement to cycle-sharing scheme Velib, Autolib opened for service - with 250 cars - in December 2011. Today membership has surpassed 160,000 and the scheme is averaging 10,000 rentals every day.

Back in London, I found a charging station that worked on Hinde Street, W1, and went and stood next to it for the day. By 8.15am all of the bays were already in use, bright yellow and blue cables plugging three cars into the available charging points. Two vehicles hovered across the street, their drivers looking on, waiting impatiently for a spot to become vacant.

I introduced myself to Luke Jackson, 24, who had his window down. He compared his VW e-up! to a milk float. "It can only go 70 to 90 miles on a full charge. That's decent for short-haul trips but I wouldn't do day-long journeys in it or go on any adventures."

Why did he buy it then? "Admittedly, it wasn't for its green credentials. I guess it was mostly because it was so cheap," he said, before explaining that the UK government provides a subsidy of up to £5,000 towards the cost of an electric car, while parking for e-cars in London is free and there is no congestion-zone charge. Jackson soon grew bored of waiting. Although he was angry, his VW pulled away to the sound of silence.

Preeti Zia, 36, had the practised swoop of an experienced driver. When a bay was vacated shortly before midday, she wasted no time in parking and plugging in, despite the presence of another electric car that might have been waiting longer than her. "If you snooze, you lose," Zia, who works in advertising, told me. She bought a Nissan Leaf - up to eight hours for a full charge; 80-mile-plus range - a few months ago and uses this bay a couple of times a week. "It's not often very convenient to charge here," she said. "But I'm the type of person who likes to stay one step ahead with the newest gadgets and technology. Early adopters always suffer a bit more. But I like to think I'm doing my bit. The more people that buy electric cars, the better the state of the infrastructure will become."

At 4.30pm I met Mark Phillips, 49, a building surveyor. He uses his Smart Electric Drive convertible every day to drive from his home in Essex to his office just around the corner from the charging station. All in, he drives no more than 50 miles a day. "But I wouldn't dream of using the Smart for anything longer. For that, I'd use our other car," he said, referring to the gas-guzzling 4x4 in the family's garage.

Phillips doesn't like using public charging stations if he can help it, preferring to plug in overnight at home, but today he was down to 50 per cent, and that made him nervous. "It should be enough to get me home later but you never know what the traffic will be like. And if the battery goes flat, I'm screwed. A two-hour top up here will get me back up to 100 per cent. Then I can rest easy."

Quietly, the electric cars kept on coming. By late afternoon, none of the bays had been free for more than a couple of minutes. Whether this signalled the popularity of electric cars or the lack of operational charging points nearby, it was hard to tell.

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The idea of electric cars has been around for more than a century. But the gap between the vision and reality has always been vast. When the first electric car was exhibited at the Chicago World's Fair in 1892, it caused a sensation. As one local newspaper reported: "The sight of a well-loaded carriage moving along the streets at a spanking pace, with no horses in front, and apparently with nothing on board to give it motion, was one that has been too much, even for the wide-awake Chicagoan." William Morrison's battery-powered automobile boasted a four-horsepower motor, giving it a maximum speed of 14mph, and could run for 13 hours between 10-hour charges from a domestic power supply.

It never made it into production but it did spark enthusiasm for electric vehicles. By the beginning of the 20th century, electrics accounted for 38 per cent of all new vehicle sales in the US; steam-powered machines accounted for 40 per cent and gasoline-powered automobiles had a minority 22 per cent share of the market.

Things soon changed. By 1908 Henry Ford's mass-produced Model T - priced much cheaper than any electric car on the market, at a level Ford's own $5-a-day workers could afford - gave oil-based fuel a commercial edge. The idea of electric cars didn't accelerate back into the mainstream until towards the end of the century when GM invested $1bn in the EV1 - ad slogan: "You will never again use the words 'Fill 'er up' or 'Check the oil'. You will simply say: 'Unplug the car and let's go!'"

The EV1 was reliable - but for all the talk of how electric cars were the future, one thing remained consistently problematic: batteries were expensive, large and heavy. The EV1 could only go 75 miles before needing a lengthy charge. In 2003 GM began retrieving EV1s from all over the US and crushing them for scrap.

Producing longer-range, less costly batteries has always been and remains one of the biggest challenges facing the electric car industry. Tesla and other car manufacturers claim that these are on the way, and not just for the luxury market. For most drivers, the gap between electric dreams and reality is a frustrating fact of life.

Towards the end of my 10-hour stint at the charging station, a Smart ForTwo pulled up. This much-maligned car is of the variety small enough to park nose-on to the kerb. It was nearly out of juice; its driver out of patience. But all the bays were occupied. Once drivers found a free space, they tended to park and charge for the entirety of the four-hour maximum stay.

"This is the third spot I've tried," said Elliot Richards, a 33-year-old software developer who was happy for me to accompany him on his search for an available charging point. His display indicated that his battery would run out within five miles. "Why. Did. I. Ever. Turn. Electric?" he said in a slow and distinct way, to make sure I understood the power of these words.

As we circled around central London, I was reminded that, more than status, the car represents freedom; that ability, as the narrator of John Updike's 1990 novel Rabbit, Run describes it, to "drive all night through the dawn through the morning through the noon park on a beach take off your shoes and fall asleep by the Gulf of Mexico."

When I looked up the quote on my smartphone and read it aloud, Richards simply laughed and shook his head.

John Sunyer is commissioning editor on Life & Arts

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