Motoring,
SParKS were flying in Frankfurt this week as the world’s car bosses spelled out that we’ll all soon be driving electric cars — providing governments build enough power stations to charge them. Manufacturers raced to outbid each other over how many of their cars will soon be electric. even Britain’s three-times F1 champion Lewis Hamilton got in on the act, unveiling Mercedes-Benz’s outrageous £2.4 million ‘race car for the road’. the petrol- electric hybrid Project 1 hypercar uses a 1.6-litre turbocharged V6 petrol engine, like that in the MercedesaMG’s F1 team’s cars, combined with lithium-ion cell batteries and four electric motors to produce ‘over 986 bhp’.
this propels it from rest to 124 mph in under six seconds and on to a top speed of 217 mph.
Volkswagen chief executive Matthias Muller, head of Europe’sthe move and biggestto it electricwould car be was maker, launching‘unstoppable’ said 80 new electric cars by 2025.
His group, which includes Bentley, Porsche, audi, Skoda, Seat, Lamborghini and Bugatti, promises at least one electrified version of every make of car in the group. Unthinkable to some purists, even Porsche will launch an electric car based on its Mission-e prototype by the end of 2018, with more hybrids to come. the car giants are taking on elon Musk’s tesla, whose innovative vehicles have shaken up the market, with relatively low volumes. BMW unveiled its own ‘tesla killer’, which will become its electric i5 executive saloon. BMW chief executive Harald Krueger said: ‘By 2025 we will be offering 25 models with an electrified drive system — of which 12 will be pure-electric.’ Meanwhile, toyota europe boss Dr Johan van Zyl — whose company started the hybrid revolution with the Prius — said 40 per cent of its sales were already electric hybrids and that would rise to half in europe by 2020.