Six times electric cars went wrong

Just how much damage did this hunchbacked plastic quadricycle do to the electric car cause? Emerging in 2001, the G-Wiz depended on a lead acid battery, good for only 50 miles of range and less performance than a moped. It dodged the Congestion Charge, but cost £10k to buy and had the crash impact protection of a napkin.

At last, an EV that didn’t look weird. The Fluence was just a rep saloon. It went quickly enough, and its 99-mile range was par in 2011. Problem was you had to lease the battery separately. So as the car depreciated (hugely), you carried on shelling out for the cells. Batteries were meant to be swappable – but then the rental company went bust.

The ghost of G-Wiz past returns. Here was a properly crash-tested microcar with a lithium-ion battery, now good for 75 miles of range. A sure-fire London success? No. The e2o lasted 13 months here, before the company bought back every car sold. Which wasn’t many. Can’t think why – apart from the interior and Flintstone ride quality.

It’s still potty to think a successful IT magnate went ahead with making an open, electrically assisted road-legal pedal car for inclement Britain. A sort of recumbent bike with a 10-mile range and 15mph vmax, it’s become a classic piece of Eighties memorabilia, as sought after by collectors as it was derided in its bitterly cold January 1985 launch.

Another one of the first wave of plastic not-so-fantastic EV city cars that forgot the golden rule – infant tech is pricey, so don’t try to do it on the cheap. Mildly successful when it arrived in 2008, thanks to a 99-mile range and bulbous Mini looks, Th!nk Global managed to go bankrupt a record four times within two decades, finally sinking in 2011.

The EV1 streamliner was slippery, performance was adequate and by leasing it to curious EV fans, GM was making major R&D headway. But despite protests from customers, GM got cold feet, repo’d and crushed the vast majority of the infant American EV. Of the 60 or so in museums, only one remains operational.