I've always has a bit of a thing against electric cars because of my quaint notion that a car should be able to tackle any journey of any length on any sort of roads. I'm wrong, of course. Lots of people have a second car used solely for biffing about their home city, dropping the kids at school or going to work or the shops. Now if those people were to be hit by big ugly congestion charges (as are slated for lots of British cities), would they not jump at a way around them? Electric cars provide that exemption, and get free parking too. And the iEV is a seriously good one. It'll carry four people, so it can do the school run, unlike the pending electric Smart. And it's properly engineered and crash-safe, unlike the Reva.

The Mitsubishi i is already one of the best city cars on the planet, almost the whole of its tiny footprint being devoted to the people inside. So it can worm cheekily into tiny traffic gaps, and yet the four people inside have room to spare. The engine's tucked under the rear, you see. This means that the i has lent itself amazingly well to electrification. The motor and controlling brains are still out back, driving the wheels directly. No need for a gearbox. Slim line waterproofed batteries (lithium-ion like your laptop's) are hung under much of the floor. From inside, there's all the space the i always had; from outside, there's no change either.

To use, there's a zero learning curve. Just plug it into the mains for six hours. Then turn the key, and in a sector two, when a 'ready' light comes on, you're, er, ready. Shift to D, release the brakes and press the accelerator. It wooshes away briskly, in eerie silence, and will keep going up to about 130kph-odd, all in the one gear. It's actually more planted and better-riding than the petrol version because of the 150kg of batteries lowering the centre of gravity. The acceleration is plenty enough for town, almost a match for the normal i. It's a lot more even and predictable because there are no gearshifts. But the silence means you're forever tooting the horn as texting pedestrians drift into what they think is an empty road.

At the moment, the iEV is a prototype, only for fleets and only for Japan. But Mitsubishi UK senses an opportunity and wants to sell it for Rs 12 lakh-ish in a year or two.

It's a minority-interest transport solution, but not an unfeasibly small minority. It's not hard to imagine people welcoming cheap recharging and being able to avoid both parking and congestion charges. Better recharge than congestion-charge. Er.