Where's the chemistry in electric cars?

You can't use a cardboard box on wheels as a penis extension, but other possibilities may arise from the electric car

Paul MacInnes
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 16 April 2009 15.30 BST

Consider the following image: Jeremy Clarkson, in tight stonewashed jeans, leather waistcoat and not a lot else, reclining over the bonnet of a Lamborghini Gallardo Spyder. How does that mental picture make you feel? Does it make you feel hot? Does it get your crankshaft rotating? Well lap it up while you can. Because the age of the sexy car (not to mention the sexy auto-evangelist) is about to come to an end.
The news of the imminent electric car revolution may not be good for environmentalists, but it's even worse for petrolheads. Look at this gallery of cars handily rehashed by us Guardian web-types to accompany today's news. Just look at it. It's a collection of cardboard boxes on wheels. A collection of one-man tents that can go from 0-60 in under half a minute. Oh and the Tesla Roadster. At $100,000 a pop.
If the greenies and euroweenies have their way (check out this spiel from French electro automaker Lumeneo) the box will be here to stay. A box, with barely enough leg room for a 13-year-old girl on a growth spurt, possesses the winning virtue of using less power, thus making it easier to charge up – in just six hours! – and more feasible to put to market using current lithium-ion cell batteries.
(There are plans, of course, for bigger, more powerful electric cars – but they will rely on technology that doesn't exist yet, or in the case of the Chevy Volt, hybrid technology that still requires a "small" four-cylinder petrol engine, just in case the car drives more than 40 miles.)
So if Arnold's Schwarzenegger's emissions enforcer Dan Sperling is right and "Vehicle electrification is inevitable", a lot of middle-aged men will have to get used to no longer using their vehicle as a figurative extension of their penis. Or even a literal one. Though I'm struggling to imagine how that would work.
There's also the interesting problem of freedom. Cars, or at least the idea of them, are built around escape, of being able to drive off into the yonder, leave your cares behind and explore new possibilities. Latterly they have come to stand for even more than that; for the individual and their ability to assert their rights against the state.
But what happens if your battery runs out halfway across Route 66? That might dull the rebellious edge somewhat. And while schemes for systems of electric recharge stations are in the works, it's difficult to imagine how they might be implemented halfway up one of those winding mountain lanes so beloved of car ads. Are we, as commenter Gulfstream5 rather hilariously put it underneath today's Guardian editorial, set for an epidemic of people "getting stuck with flat batteries all over the place and having to be rescued"?
It would certainly be striking and would herald the death knell for the car as a symbol not just of sex but of rebellion too. This I would welcome and am excited by the possibilities that might arise from it. I look forward to Vin Diesel duelling with middle-eastern bad guys while on the 45 bus to Venice beach. Or Kid Rock composing an album of hymns to the masculine virtues of market gardening. Or, indeed, Jeremy Clarkson being out of a job.