A couple of weeks ago, I went with my wife and friends to hear the great tenor Andrea Bocelli sing in London’s 02 Arena, formerly the infamous Millennium Dome. We went early to eat and take a look around. Being a car enthusiast one of my friends was drawn to an impressive looking exhibition of Nissan’s new cars. As we all entered and slowed to take in the new Nissan Leaf electric car, clearly the exhibition’s show-piece, an unfortunate young salesman came up to me deliver his sales patter. I say “unfortunate” because, of the thirty or so milling around the car, he had plainly, as one of my friends later grinned, picked the wrong man.

After listening to a couple of minutes of his ‘green credential’ pre-packaged screed, I quietly held up my hand and announced, “I wouldn’t have one if you gave it to me”. (A somewhat disingenuous remark, as I would indeed accept a freebie – there’s always a mug ‘greenie’ out there who would think it a good buy.)

Stopped in his tracks by my trite observation he enquired why. “How much does it cost?” I asked. “£23K”, ($36.2K) he beamed. “About twice the cost of my car,” I informed him, “yet mine does almost 50 miles per gallon of diesel, can go almost five times further without refuelling and, after a five minute re-fuel, can do it all again immediately. Why would I want a car that can only travel 100 miles at a slow speed and then requires hours of re-charging?”

“But it can be plugged in anywhere to re-charge it,” he tried. “Not on the M1 – and only then after a multi-billion pound grid national infrastructure was put in place. Why should the nation’s taxpayers have to pick up the tab to pay for that when most of the nation will never drive one?” I pointed out that Nissan was only able to manufacture in the first place (making a tidy profit for the company) because the British taxpayer stumped up over £20 million to bring the ultimate cost down to the still high sale price. “Why would I want a car that could only take me 100 miles, but couldn’t immediately get me back again?” At this, his eyes lit up. He was primed for this one. “Ah,” he said, “but it’s not meant as the primary household vehicle! People can use this for shorter trips.” For a guy who probably didn’t earn a lot himself, he failed to see the irony of this. “So,” I started, “now you’re telling me that to have your green ‘miracle’ car, the average household must buy two cars at double the cost? How many do you think can afford such an expensive neighborhood runabout?”

By now we were (very respectfully, I might say) ‘into it’. Statistics flew back and forth. His related to performance, mine to over-riding energy and cost-for-cost facts. I liked this guy. But he wasn’t giving up without a fight. So I wheeled out what has always been the Achilles heel that has, for 100 years, kept all-electric cars from breaking as a mass market contender: the highly restrictive low-energy density of the battery. “Until we assault the battery issue,” I can be witty at times, “electric cars can never be a serious proposition.”

“Well perhaps they will be just niche cars,” he finally admitted. “So why then” I asked, “ should the taxpayer be made to pour millions in to subsidize its production and then billions to build a national grid infrastructure for a car that only a ‘niche’ minority of the well-heeled could or would ever buy?” He looked as flat as an electric car battery that had travelled less than 100 miles. He was thinking this was not what he had signed up for. By now, I was feeling guilty. After all, he was just doing his job.

At that point one of our party intervened. “You should know,” she whispered to the sales guy, “he’s (meaning me) just written a book about energy”. At which we both smiled and shook hands. “Good to hear a different point of view,” he intoned. “Kind of you to let me give it,” I said sincerely. As I was leaving the area he shouted, “What’s the title of your book? Like to buy one.” I gave him a card with book title written on the back and left. Half an hour later, as Bocelli’s voice soared gloriously, I couldn’t help but smile – about the book unexpected sale. After all, it’s not every day you make a profit from a car salesman.

Since our evening’s divertissement, Chris Booker’s Sunday Telegraph column (December 5) did a similar hatchet-job on the Nissan Leaf. Booker pointed out incredulously that “for some incomprehensible reason” the Nissan Leaf, due to go on sale in March 2011, had just been voted European Car of the Year by motoring journalists. Not that any of them would actually want to own it themselves, you understand – a fact borne out by one of Chris B’s other revelations. Over the summer Booker had asked the UK Department of Transport in the summer how many electric cars had actually been sold in Britain in 2009. At the time, says Booker, the DTP had been “conspicuously reluctant to answer”. “Hardly surprising,” explains Booker who noted that a non-DTP source had revealed the exact figure: fifty-five.

The fact is, even the much-vaunted hybrid, the Toyota Prius, has only racked up sales of around 2 million since it was launched. Sound a lot? Not when you consider that’s a tiny fraction of the billion or so cars around the world. One wag put it this way, “It’s easy to sell a product that nobody wants. You either discount it, so consumers think they’re getting the steal of the century, or you press-gang the taxpayer into subsidizing it. Guess which method is used to unload electric cars?”

As a colleague of mine has written, “All-electric cars are The Next Big Thing. And they always will be.”