And thus I will for my attacks on the Ev’ie electric Citroen C1 last week.
It appears that there is in fact a fully electric Ev’ie out on the streets of London. (Shame the DVLA still think it’s petrol, but still, it IS electric. Or certainly, it is now.

It seems that my little worried post about the car being nothing but hype wasn’t truly accurate. While the photos I complained about last week are quite clearly photoshopped and don’t quite match up with what ECC PLC were saying, it’s probably more a case of them having not got a vehicle to use for publicity when the shots were taken than it being a complete out-and-out fake.
So I was wrong. I apologize. How do I know? It appears that WhatCar? have been given the first test drive of the converted C1 Ev’ie prototype. Now that’s more like the behavior you’d expect from a car company with big names on the board of directors.
They even have a Youtube Video of it, which proves that the car exists and is driveable. Although there did appear to be some issues with the prototype while WhatCar? were driving it.
Video and continued post after the jump.

Since the UK government announced that they plan to launch a scheme in 2011 to give new car buyers up to £5,000 towards the purchase of a fully electric or plug-in hybrid car there’s been quite a lot of press coverage for electric cars. Some good, and some bad.
Amongst those who seek to discredit the environmental, economic and social impact of electric vehicles there have been many who have tried to scaremonger the general public that a nation of electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids will cause mass power outages of a scale big enough to rival the famous brown-outs of the East Coast United States of the early part of this century. If these naysayers were to be believed a whole country of electric cars plugging in would be catastrophic for the rest of society.
Well, guess what? A study, conducted by LandRover-Jaguar, Ricardo, Amberjac Projects and E.O.N, has concluded that the UK PowerGrid is capable and ready to support a large amount of electric and plug in cars already. So next time you plug in, you know you’re not denying anyone some much-needed electricity and causing mass brown-outs. That’s nice, isn’t it?

Read more after the jump.

If you’re wondering about the title of this post It’s quite simple. I’m fed up dealing with all the excuses that car companies make when trying to sell EVs. It’s not going to make them popular. Plus it gives the Jeremy Clarksons of the world ammunition in their mission to hate anything without a V8 and a huge exhaust. And who can blame them. When so many in the EV world make silly claims about their cars or silly excuses about how they perform.
I’ve been thinking about this post for quite some time, ever since I went for a test-drive for an EV in London and found that the company offering the test drive were about as professional as buying a car from a dodgy guy in a pub car-park. Why? It was poor organisation, delivery and knowledge. Oh, and a car which was nearly empty. Not good publicity. (They’ve since improved greatly).

It wasn’t until I spent some time reading my .rss feeds today that I even heard of a new EV company which launched today. It almost seemed too good to be true. A London-based company, full of really creditable names from the Auto Industry, who are offering brand new, fully converted Citroen C1s. And at a price tag of £16,850 it’s actually not that much more expensive than the lithium ion powered G-Wiz. But a whole lot more impressive, if the specs can be believed.
There’s only one thing which concerns me. Is it actually available today, or do we have another car company scrapping for attention with a promise and a prayer?
And what’s this suspicious looking ‘photoshop’ artifact on one of the photographs on the company’s website, just about where an exhaust would be?

A few weeks ago I announced the first prize giveaway on www.aminorjourney.com. Anyone who followed me on Twitter was automatically entered into a free prize-draw to win a copy of Sherry Boschert’s excellent book, Plug-In Hybrids: The cars which will recharge America .
I had a total of 109 people enter into this competition and using TwitRand I was able to select a winner from my Twitter followers at random. The computer chose Dan Morril (@morrildl) of San Francisco as the lucky winner. Congratulations, Dan! A copy of Sherry’s book is winging it’s way to you very shortly.

For those who weren’t lucky enough to win a copy of Sherry’s book then don’t despair. Next months’ giveaway is equally as cool. Details after the jump!