When you buy an electric car you get torque, silence and a clear conscience plus, in many countries, hefty tax breaks. All that will help clean up our transport system, which is the aim of government and the subject of a new push this week from the European Union on transport emissions. But inside electric cars is something else, perhaps even more important, which helps not just you but everyone else who relies on the electric grid: a big battery.
This promises a breakthrough, for the big difficulty facing advanced countries’ energy systems is not generating power, but storing it.
Power is increasingly abundant; wind-generated electricity is now on offer at 5.75p a kilowatt hour, a bargain compared with the 9.25p to be charged by