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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.