Test drive: GoinGreen G-Wiz i

You realise that GoinGreen's brand-new G-Wiz “i” still needs a bit more ironing out the first time you visit a car park with a take-the-ticket barrier. The little electric car's windows slide open to let fresh air in, but not in such a way as to let your arm out. So it's either sit and wait to evolve a third elbow or open the door. Fortunately the G-Wiz is so narrow that there is always enough room to swing the door wide, so there's no need for a sideways limbo through a quarter-open aperture to grab the ticket

Of course the sliding windows are the least of this car's foibles. The G-Wiz jumps around like a jackrabbit over bumps and potholes, has a handbrake that feels as solid and well put together as a cocktail umbrella, and offers a feeling of luxury on a par with a pedalo. If you buy one, you may well wonder where your nine grand went.

It certainly didn't go on providing a commodious interior because there isn't one. Front seat passengers sit closer than adolescent lovers, and the driver can happily adjust the passenger door mirror simply by reaching across the car.

But there are upsides, of course, or we wouldn't be writing this and no-one would ever have bought a G-Wiz. Item number one on the tick list is that the G-Wiz is great fun. Fun like driving a dodgem – or, indeed, like riding any other fairground ride of questionable safety. You get in, strap in, hope none of the bolts come undone, and emerge at the other end wearing a silly grin.

The new model is safer than the old one, and the new curved screen gives a bit more room between forehead and windscreen, although the rear-view mirror still feels close enough to poke you in the eye.

And the new car is marginally faster than the old AC model.

Fast is relative, of course, but the G-Wiz i feels quite quick enough for urban roads. It will hit 45mph eagerly enough and can indeed reach the claimed 50mph. Thankfully the new front disc brakes are up to the job of stopping from such speeds, but the G-Wiz is not really happy at the top end of its rapidity range. Like re-entry from orbit, max-power runs are a loud, vibratory test of mettle that tend to be accompanied by crossed fingers and murmured prayers.

There's even a go-faster mode on the rotary, dash-mounted gear selector, which provides extra acceleration rather than additional top speed. It offers reassurance when a quick getaway is needed. No doubt something would melt if you drove around in this mode all of the time, and most of the time it's not necessary.

The new “i” model isn't radically different from all the G-Wizzes that have gone before – it still has laughable back seats, laughable looks, gawky proportions, nippy steering, a tiny turning circle, lead-acid batteries and limited (40-odd mile) range. But it is improved. And it is a lot better than taking the bus.

Will Mega City facelift bring more power?

The Nice Car Company looks set to revamp its slow-selling and slow-moving Mega City electric runabout. The Mega City is based on a quadricycle normally sold to European teenagers by Aixam, and now Aixam has revamped this base vehicle. The old and boxy Aixam A751 has been replaced by the new and curvy Roadline.

Aixam’s cars are normally powered by small conventional engines, but Nice of course slots in a battery and motor combination. Now it looks set to repeat the powerplant transplant with the Roadline.

When we zipped, or rather chugged, around in the Mega City last year, it wasn’t the looks that really bothered us but the lamentable lack of acceleration. We’ve since spun around the block in the latest G-Wiz “i” and can confirm that the Mega City feels a slug in comparison to the latest Wiz.

So as well as a facelift, we’d like the Mega City to pay a visit to the gym. A beefed-up battery and motor combination would not go amiss.

New Mayor Boris brings London EVs back from the brink

No doubt champagne corks will have popped among makers of electric cars late last week, as Boris Johnson was confirmed as the new London Mayor. One of the primary markets for their products, the UK’s capital, had just come back from the dead.

To recap, from October this year, electric cars were due to lose their special status as vehicles exempt from the London Congestion Charge. While they were to continue to slip into the zone without paying the £8 per day toll, so too would any small car falling into road-tax band A or B.

£8 per day can quickly mount up in thousands, so exemption is a real financial plus – and spreading that benefit out into the ranks of conventional superminis would have spelled death for the electric car in the capital. Faced with an equal congestion-charge benefit from choosing a G-Wiz or, say, a Toyota Aygo, most punters would not be calling GoinGreen to snap up a Wiz.

But Boris has pledged to halt the planned change, which notoriously would also have seen owners of the largest cars paying £25 to enter the zone. In his mayoral manifesto on transport [PDF], Johnson pledged, “I will not allow smaller cars into the Congestion Charge zone for free, or introduce Ken Livingstone’s £25 charge on large family cars.”

While outgoing Mayor Ken Livingstone was not hostile to the electric runabout, he did nothing to promote it. He reportedly said that his planned £25 charge on the most polluting cars would not have been acceptable to the public without the freebie for smaller cars, and the damage to the electric car startups was not an issue.

Boris, on the other hand, is actually a G-Wiz fan. A year ago, in his Telegraph column, Boris wrote:

“I have just overtaken two girls in the cleanest, greenest, sweetest four-wheeled self-propelled invention to hit the London streets since the first horseless carriage arrived at the end of the 19th century.

This machine is so simple and yet so revolutionary that it restores one's faith in scientific progress. Not since the windmills sprouted on the roofs of Notting Hill has there been a gizmo so deliriously trendy and yet so gentle to the upper air.

I am talking about the G-Wiz electric car. In case you have yet to spot one of these mobile rabbit hutches, they are manufactured in India out of plastic and rubber bands, and since they are powered by a battery they emit no more CO2 than a small dandelion. They are at once as green, and as hopeful for the future of capitalism, as a dollar bill.”

Plus, Boris has pledged to allow motorcycles to use bus lanes in London. We wonder if he will put a broad smile on the faces of EV makers and users alike by extending the same huge benefit to electric cars.