Baby, you can plug in my car

  • 12/11/2007

  • Outlook (New Delhi)

India's electric car Reva sets the wheels in motion in climate-conscious UK IT'S only a little longer than a longish stride and as silent as tip-toeing; it's a car without a conventional engine or fuel tank that so far only Bangalore and London really share. G-Wiz: that's what the London distributors of the Bangalorean Reva car are calling it. And that's what an excited London media is exclaiming too. Just about every newspaper and TV channel here has been smitten by this little phenomenon on wheels. With about 900 cars on London's roads, a fair bit more than the 650 in Bangalore, G-Wiz has claimed more attention than sales so far. But this is a breakthrough car; the first car to run on batteries that works in an everyday kind of way. At 70 km an hour, it is fast enough for city driving, and with an 80 km range on a single charge of a few hours in an ordinary electric socket, it gets far enough for ordinary use. It's cheap to use; you can run it for a year averaging 10 km a day for the price of a single tank of petrol. At