I’m quite excited to report that I have been accepted as a participant in the CABLED electric car project. This is the local part of a national trial running with a wide variety of electric and plug in electric hybrid cars. There will be 110 cars from six manufacturers being trialled for 12 months on the streets of Birmingham and Coventry, with the aim of helping to understand the environmental and economic implications of electric vehicles. It will include not just the cars themselves but the installation of public charging points.

The car I have been selected to drive is the Tata Indica EV, a small family hatchback, with a 100 mile range on a normal driving cycle. It takes 8 hours to fully charge from a domestic 3 pin plug and can be topped up at any time. One key development currently being worked on is a fast charge system which should reduce charging time to around 30 minutes.

I take the car (one of 25 being hand built in the West Midlands from standard Indica bodies, imported from India) on a test drive in a couple of weeks and will hopefully have mine within a month or so from then. If you’d like to know more there is more information on the trial at www.cabled.org.uk.

I will post regularly about the trial as it progresses.