I had my first drive of the Tata Indica Electric Vehicle yesterday evening at the Gaydon Motor Heritage Centre. I drove a prototype vehicle, which is very similar to the trial versions about to be manufactured, for about 15 minutes around the grounds of the Centre.

 What strikes you after driving the car is how easy it is. Essentially its like driving a petrol or diesel car without having to worry about changing gear. The car just has two peddles – go and stop and a simple forwards, stop and reverse gear shift. It is very nippy at slow speeds and as you would imagine, wonderfully quite and smooth.

The car is a four seater, which uses the shell of the normal Indica car (similar to a Focus or Golf in size and shape) and has a range of just over 100 miles. Charging looks simple, just a question of plugging it into a normal three pin socket at home overnight or at one of the new charging points that have been installed in various locations across the West Midlands.

It has all left me champing at the bit to get hold of my own trial car – but I will have to wait until early October for that, so in meantime back to my 9 year old diesel Focus.