Lovely car but I don’t need the ‘range anxiety’

JABBING away at a confusing array of shiny buttons and colourful dials on the ultra-modern dashboard, it felt as if I was preparing the car for lift-off into space.

But all I was doing was desperately searching for the button that would kick-start my Mini Electric into life. All rather embarrassing given that unbeknown to me I had already pressed something that had turned on the car’s engine – quiet as a mouse compared to the growl of an internal combustion engine.

Putting my foot down on the pedal, there was a sudden whoosh of wind. The sensation is like squeezing the trigger of a Scalextric remote control – but instead of powering a toy, this is a full-size electric car.

Packed with plenty of punch, the motor puts many petrol- fuelled rivals to shame, managing zero to 60mph in a racy seven seconds.

My car came with a couple of recharging socket options – so I could use most paid- for charge points. It also had an adapter, allowing it to charge through a standard three-pin electric socket at home – though requiring an overnight charge of a dozen hours.

On the road, I soon suffered serious ‘range anxiety’. The 79 miles of charge showing on my high-tech dashboard should have been plenty to complete the 54-mile journey I was making from home near Bishop’s Stortford in Hertfordshire to Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk.

But t owards t he end of my journey, the words ‘electric range insufficient’ started flashing up. This inevitably triggered a panicky search for a charging point, a halfhour wait at a Texaco garage while t wo other el ectric cars were charged, and then an hour for my Mini Cooper to be recharged.

I also had to download the GeniePoint app in order to pay.

The result? A journey that should have taken an hour consumed three hours of my life.

Electric cars may indeed be the future, but I won’t be buying one just yet.