Tesla Store in Knightsbridge, as Talulah and Elon meet and greet

Tesla Motors held a launch party at the new London Store in Knightsbridge last night. Top of the guestlist was company chief Elon Musk, who flew in specially for the event.

“He’s very good looking,” whispered my missus, politely. Annoyingly, I have to agree. He’s also made his millions many times over thanks to an internet business, and since branched out into electric sports cars and space rockets. Somewhere in his schedule he’s even found time to date young British movie actress Talulah Riley. Not bad going for a 37-year old.

“The US Department of Energy has just approved a loan to us of some half a billion dollars. Which was nice of them…” deadpanned Elon, to cheers from the throng. Not shy of his public profile, it was a typical statement from this occasionally controversial figure. Detractors have bashed Tesla from day one, arguing that Musk is a crazed egomaniac running a Ponzi scheme building this century’s Tucker Torpedo. It’s nonsense – the cars exist, the stores exist. Those grapes sour enough?

Conversely, I think Musk’s style and flamboyance are sorely needed to create interest in electric cars, which let’s face it are generally pretty uninspiring. We drove the Roadster last year, and as the Tesla rep handed me the keys, his words stuck with me: “You’ll enjoy this, it’s really a blast to drive.” Boyish glee pervades this company. And that’s a good thing.

BMW are working on this

A piece of sales blurb kicking around from a recent motor show invites me to run my car on water.

This ingenious invention, which for layman’s sake I’ll refer to as ‘Water-To-Fuel’ technology (WTF), consists of a small electrolyser that fits neatly under the bonnet. It’s connected to the car’s alternator where “otherwise wasted energy” (WTF) is used to generate hydrogen on the fly, no storage required.

This so-called ‘Brown’s gas’ is injected into the combustion chamber alongside the fuel, producing no less than: “More power and torque, 50% fewer emissions and up to 100% greater fuel efficiency.” WTF?

On paper this sounds great. It also sounds suspiciously like perpetual motion. The engine burns fuel to generate hydrogen, which is injected in with more fuel, which allows the engine to generate more hydrogen… we’re breaking the laws of thermodynamics.

Were efficiency savings really so straightforward, it seems strange that the mainstream manufacturers should decide not to fit them as standard….

Great scott... you mean I won?

It’s not all bad for General Motors. Sure, they may be busy selling off the family silver, but the trophy cabinet isn’t completely bare thanks to the What Car? Technology Award for the Vauxhall Ampera. What car? you’d be justified in asking, as the Ampera (in America it’s called the Chevrolet Volt) isn’t due to commence production until 2011 at the earliest.

In handing over the award, What Car? described GM’s Voltec series hybrid system as “simple, should be effective.. it’s pretty future proof, too.” Er yeah, should be.

Look, on paper the Volt is a very exciting car. But when no-one’s even seen it working yet, let alone driven it, dishing out the awards seems somewhat premature. This is an extremely complicated machine and big question marks remain over GM’s perilous financial state, the anticipated 40000 dollar cost, the fall in oil prices, battery longevity…

In related news, the NCN Award For Most Impressive Future Transport Design goes to… Emmett Brown, for his flux capacitor DeLorean! Applause!

Emmett can’t be with us tonight, as he’s currently visiting ancestors in the year AD85.  

Main image: CARS by Stephen Bayley. Inset: Sparing a Panda its blushes.

Despite the title, let me assure you that this post has nothing to do with the untimely demise of actor David Carradine. No, this is a different kind of auto-erotic experience - the type that you get from Stephen Bayley’s latest book: CARS - Freedom, Style, Sex, Power, Motion, Colour, Everything.

This gorgeous book has already been described in the Sunday Telegraph as ‘autoporn at its most lascivious’ so I’m not ashamed to say that I have spent some quiet me time lingering over the pages which are set off so beautifully by Tif Hunter’s photographs.

During a recent coffee break browse however, I have to say that my state of bliss was suddenly ruined, nay spoiled, by the sight of a disgusting protruberance on page 347. For whatever reason, the Fiat Panda featured is fitted with some kind of nasty aftermarket spoiler which completely destroys the purity of Giugiaro’s original design.

The appendage in question is simply too shocking to display here so the image has been censored.

Top: Z4 app on iTunes, Middle: Artwork I created with the app, Bottom: The real Z4 as tested

I promised I’d keep you posted (literally) on interesting car-related iPhone apps so here’s an update on my experience with BMW Z4 - An Expression of Joy - Lite (available free of charge on the iTunes Store) in comparison with my real-world  drive of the BMW Z4 which I got to try out at Millbrook last week.

My own background is creative: I excelled in art at school and went on to study Industrial Design at degree level, so I can appreciate BMW’s desire to follow a different (more artistic) path with its iPhone app than the obvious track or road-based driving game which has pretty much been done to death.

The problem for me is that this ‘expression of joy’ is simply lacking in the joy department. It’s actually dull. Painting a vast virtual canvas using the Z4’s tyres as rollers is about as much fun as watching…well, I guess the only redeeming feature is that the app doesn’t require you to wait for the virtual paint to dry.

In contrast to my joyless iPhone drive, I’m delighted to report that the real thing is a completely different kettle of fish.

I tested a Z4 sDrrive 30i and liken its performance to a Mike Tyson punch (in his heyday, of course) delivered in a velvet glove.

The stats are pretty impressive too: 258 bhp, 310 Nm, 0-62 mph in 5.8 seconds and a top speed electronically restricted to 155 mph. In light of these, 33.2 mpg economy on the Combined Cycle is not to be sniffed at either.

Artistically, I have to say I prefer the boldness of the original Z4’s styling to the subtlety of the new car, but I suspect I’m in a minority with that view. The adoption of the folding tin-top rather than the fabric roof also makes for a compromised coupe design, so I think the Z4 looks its best with the top down.

So BMW hasn’t lost the plot when it comes to sportscars, it just needs to make sure that the essential fun element present in the roadster remains undiluted throughout its creative advertising and marketing campaign - right the way down to its iPhone app.

PS:

I note that there is now a paid for app (59p) available called the BMW Z4 Experience which may well have appeared as a response to some who share my point of view but I’ll have to check that out another day.

The car - like the world - has changed a lot since 1957

We’re living through the death throes of the American ‘big three’ car makers, with an outcome still unclear. Governmental and public support for an immediate cash bailout should, on paper, be quite extraordinary, given the history of the U.S. and its aversion to socialist principles. Chrysler and General Motors (and to a lesser extent, Ford) are failing, yet rather than let the market take its course are being steered towards an artificial coma-like state. Even if they were competitive tomorrow, it would surely be years before they can pay back the billions, much less be profitable? Yet they will not allowed to fade away either.

In some respects this is perfectly understandable. No president wants the collapse of an industry on his watch. And there are pressing economic reasons to keep the cars coming of course - an awful lot of American jobs are at stake. But could there be something else going on here?

America didn’t invent the horseless carriage, but over the last century embraced and developed it like no other country has. Its arrival coincided with the nation itself: parts of North America were unfounded when Daimler patented his combustion engine in 1885. Take the city of Tulsa in Oklahoma, which had little over 200 citizens at the time, and only 1,100 by the turn of the century. It would later grow rich on local oil discoveries.

In 1957 during America’s economic boom time, the Tulsan authorities decided to mark the half-century of their city by burying a time capsule in the square. What better way to represent themselves and their lives than a car? So a brand new Plymouth Belvedere - tailfins and all - was lowered into a vault where it lay buried for fifty years, almost forgotten, in front of the courthouse.

Eighteen months ago, preparations were well underway to extricate the Plymouth – a marque that has ceased to be in the intervening years. As the earth was removed and sunlight bathed the tomb for the first time in half a century, tension was palpable. “It’s our King Tut’s tomb, it’s like a fairy tale,” remarked one onlooker. “I can’t wait to see her lifted out and that engine cranked over!” remarked another. Only there was a problem: the car was under water. The vault had leaked, probably within a year or two of being shut. And to make matters worse, Chrysler cars of the 1950s had subsequently shown a terrible propensity for rust.

There was little left of the Belvedere, save rivers of brown water and a rotten interior. Today, the car that was buried during America’s optimistic heyday seems an all-too painful parable for its car industry. “There’s nothing that isn’t restorable,” said a crestfallen visitor.

Perhaps the lesson should be that nothing lasts forever.

What’s the coolest wedding gift you can think of?  If money were no object, I guess we could all think of some crazy ideas like a gift-wrapped Lear Jet or a pearl-encrusted Bugatti Veyron, but when I tied the knot with my other half a few years’ back, one of my dearest chums surprised me with an absolute cracker of a present - a customised Scalextric set.

He’d swapped out the standard rally cars for versions of our own road cars, a VW Beetle and a SEAT Ibiza, which he’d painted and correctly number-plated for added authenticity.

Well it seems that VW’s marketing gurus have been thinking along the same lines in seeking out target customers for their new Golf GTI ahead of its launch on May 22. They’ve created a massive virtual Scalextric layout in a hangar in a secret location where you can sneak in and test the new car’s ‘on-track’ performance.

The track is the work of a team of 60 modellers and features over 200 scale buildings in a space occupying 25ft by 30ft.  My only gripe is that VW have created the car in 1:43 scale rather than the 1:32 of my classic boyhood sets (anorak alert) - but this in no way spoils the experience.

You’ll have to take it a little steady at first since the lab-technician will only replace your car a limited number of times when you come off.

If you set a decent lap time you can enter a draw to win use of the real GTI for 3 months. Log on to GTI Project to take a speedy Scalextric trip down memory lane without having to go into a dusty loft and then spend hours setting up your track. Enjoy!

David Martell (of Trafficmaster fame) has set up the Electric Car Corporation (ECC) to launch what the company describes as the UK’s first full 4 seat electric production car - the ev’ie (or evie, depending on how lazy you are with pretentious punctuation marks).

The launch took place at a West London hotel which gave us the chance to try out the Citroen C1-based car slap bang in the middle of the Congestion Charge zone - an area in which ECC hopes the evie will find many friends.

The brief presentation was well attended by council officials as well as journalists. Mary Toffi, Transport Policy Manger of Richmond Council explained that ECC has been approved as a Car Club. The Borough is planning to double its allocation of car club bays over the next year (mainly at the expense of residents’ parking) so ECC is clearly hoping to occupy as many of these as possible.

Although our brief drive was confined to a small area in and around Hyde Park, we were able to get a feel for the responsiveness of the evie’s power unit as we accelerated away from the lights and blended effortlessly into the lunchtime traffic flow.

The controls couldn’t be simpler. The ‘gearstick’ (there are no gears as such) has just two positions: forward and reverse. The pedals are just stop and go.

ECC’s Technical Director Jeff Solomon accompanied me on the drive. I was concerned that the severity of the regenerative braking (as you lift off, the car decelerates instantly without you touching the brake pedal) might catch out following drivers but Solomon reassured me, “As soon as the regenerative braking kicks in, the brake lights are activated.”

As you’d expect from an electric car, the motor was pretty much silent. In other respects, the car was as comfortable and refined as a regular Citroen C1. The only apparent compromise is the reduction in boot space to accommodate the battery pack, an overnight charge of which will give you a realistic driving range of 60-70 miles.

At almost £17K, the evie could look expensive, but it seems like an absolute bargain when compared to the Lithium-ion version of the toy town inspired G-Wiz quadricycle which is far smaller, has never been near a crash-test, yet still retails at just £1,000 less!

The evie’s price does include a 3-year warranty and even if you achieve half the annual savings of £7,000 touted by Martell, you can see that the numbers begin to add up.

All we need now, I hear you say, is some serious investment in infrastructure so there are enough charging points to meet the potential demand. Well, they’ve thought of that too, setting up a separate company called ECC Infracharge to assist with the installation of more juice points at a reduced cost.

ECC Board member, Christopher Ross, bullishly told me that the evie would be available from Citroen showrooms, but the Citroen PR team on hand seemed to suggest it was not yet a done deal. Either way, if you’re keen on the idea of electric motoring, the evie certainly seems to make a lot of sense.

Top: Cube shows it\'s hip to be square; Above: smoking permitted

Losses. Closures. Looming bankruptcies. It’s easy to forget there are exciting things happening in the automotive world too. Here’s my personal pick:

Something Old: Jaguar XJ – it may have lineage going back over 40 years, but if rumours are to be believed, designer Ian Callum’s newest XJ is a rulebook-tearing interpretation that will ‘blow everybody away.’

Something New: Nissan Cube – this unmistakeable car pops up on British roads as a grey import from time to time, but will soon be officially offered here. “Quirky new Kia Soul”? Meh you can keep it, the Cube has an ASYMMETRIC design for crying out loud!

Something Borrowed: Hyundai Genesis Coupe – sadly, it’ll need to be borrowed, as this stylish RWD muscle car looks unlikely to reach showrooms in the UK. Modifiers will opt for the blown 2-litre, but I’ll take one with the 3.8-litre V6 engine, please. TC… *off*.. mmmm… doughnuts.

Something Blue: BlueTec engines – Despite a North American aversion to oil-burners, Daimler’s clean diesel units are so good, they’re certified for use in 45 States. And the technology is only going to get better from here.

So, what automotive highlights are you looking forward to?

Nissan Cube bravely doubles as a safety net

……someone shows you a photo of a street entertainer walking a tightrope and your immediate response is,

“Is that a Nissan Cube?”

I think I realised that the cap (or hood) fitted me years ago, so I may have to create a specific category to contain my geekier posts.

Watch out for them floodgates!