Fuel crisis – what fuel crisis? Streaking past garage forecourts, I shake my head in disbelief. Not at the prices, but at the drivers prepared to pay almost £1.40 a litre for diesel.

“What choice do I have?” they might say despondently. Well, when the all-electric Smart car goes into mass production many commuters will be able to drive away from wallet-busting fuel bills for good.

The Smart ED (for electric drive) is by no means the first electric vehicle to hit British roads in recent years. There are already several hundred electric Reva G-Wizes tootling around central London, for a start. The new Smart, however, will be a fully fledged electric car – the G-Wiz is classified as a mere quadricycle – and that means the same comfort levels as a conventional petrol-powered Smart Fortwo, the same safety features and the ability, if all goes to plan, to score the same number of stars (four out of five) in the Euro NCAP safety tests for adult occupancy. And as Smart is part of Mercedes-Benz, you’ll be able to buy one from a conventional dealership.

Best of all, though, you get 50 miles of motoring for every £1 of electricity you put in the battery – which Smart works out as about the equivalent of 300mpg. It has a respectable top speed of 65mph and a range of about 70 miles between recharges (compared with 50mph and 48 miles respectively for the latest, £9,000 G-Wiz).

Recently Smart began a trial of 100 Smart electric vehicles, which are being loaned to UK companies. The car is likely to appear in showrooms in a couple of years at a predicted starting price of about £12,000. It is set to appeal to motorists who want to save fuel – not to mention the planet – but don’t want to do it at the expense of style, comfort, safety and convenience.

With the cost of oil rising, coupled with growing concerns about climate change, the rush to produce the first generation of viable, modern-day electric cars has suddenly hotted up.

Pressure is mounting especially hard in the United States, which is rapidly building new coal-burning power stations in a bid to liberate itself from overreliance on Middle Eastern oil. Buoyed up by American enthusiasm for an alternative to petrol-fuelled vehicles, Toyota is planning to launch a plug-in Prius, giving the popular petrol-electric hybrid a much longer range under electric power (although it will still have a petrol tank).

Nissan recently announced that from next year it plans to mass produce lithium-ion batteries, which are smaller and lighter than conventional batteries in electric cars, can be charged more quickly and have the potential to offer much longer ranges. It aims to produce all-electric vehicles from about 2010.

General Motors is planning to turn its Chevrolet Volt concept car – another plug-in hybrid with lithium-ion batteries – into a production-ready model by 2010.

Before then, though, there will be the Th!nk City, the Norwegian-designed electric car that will reportedly be available in the UK from early next year.

It’s unsurprising therefore that last week Martin Winterkorn, chairman of Volkswagen, told Germany’s popular Bild newspaper: “The future belongs to the electric car.”

The Smart ED, however, is certainly near the forefront of the, er, charge. From the outside there is no clue to its electric heart. Inside, the only giveaway is a dial on the dashboard that displays the remaining charge on a scale of 0 to 100%. Slip the key into the ignition barrel – located on the floor between the seats – twist it and instead of the whir of a starter motor, a digital alarm sounds to tell you the journey may begin.

Put your foot on the brake, shift the gearbox – which is taken from the existing Smart Fortwo’s transmission and mated with the Zytek DC motor – into “Drive” and the motor grumbles away like a cacophony of kitchen appliance mating calls.

After that, you get an eerie silence. Along side streets, under heavy acceleration or at a steady throttle input, there’s enough of a whine from the motor to have pedestrians looking over their shoulder for a milk float. Coast off the throttle, however, and it’s totally silent, which means you need to watch pedestrians like a hawk in case they suddenly step out in front of you.

The Smart’s 55kW electric motor can spin at up to 12000rpm and beat virtually anything off the line at the lights as it delivers all its power from the moment you floor the throttle. Beyond 30mph, however, you’ll be left for dust, although it’s reassuring to find that, should you see a gap in the fuming traffic, there’s enough power to claim it. Even the air-conditioning does not seem to drain the battery noticeably faster, and at 60mph on the motorway the car cruises comfortably.

Electric vehicles are exempt from the London congestion charge, and some councils offer them free parking – and even free recharge points. Westminster council, for example, has installed 48 charging points in its Masterpark car parks and 12 new on-street parking bays with free recharging points (following payment of a £75 annual fee). EDF, the power company, is placing up to 250 charging points at some of the UK’s largest shopping centres. With its 70-mile range the Smart ED could even be viable for some commuters.

There are some teething troubles, though. Zytek, the Staffordshire-based company that has engineered the 100 electric test cars on behalf of Smart, needs to go back to the drawing board with the suspension. Over potholes, the weight of the batteries over the rear suspension makes the car feel like a bucking-bronco ride.

And then we come to the rigmarole of recharging the battery. It takes eight hours to charge the Smart’s battery, although 3½ hours would be enough to boost it from 30% to 80% charged.

The main stumbling block is the laughably short – just 20ft long – charge lead. Anyone in a first-floor flat, without driveway parking or beyond striking distance of a free city-centre recharging point would have to invest in an industrial-length extension cable or drive well out of their way every day just to “park’n’charge”.

There is also a strict order to the recharging process. First, plug the lead into the Smart ED (where the petrol filler cap would normally be), then plug the other end into a wall socket and finally switch on. You then reverse the procedure, switching off and unplugging from the wall, before unplugging the car from its life support. If you’re in a hurry and get any of this wrong will the Smart ED blow the largest fuse ever?

Without exception, existing all-electric vehicles to date have made you suffer for your conscience. And none satisfies the rigorous safety standards that global car manufacturers design their products to. The Smart ED could be about to change all that.

Think of it as a cross between Richard Hammond, James May and Jeremy Clarkson – small and stylish, quirky and clever and capable of causing a real stir. This could be the start of something big.

Where to find a ‘juice point’

For anyone with a mains-connected garage, charging the Smart ED is not a problem, but those who live in fifth-floor flats will struggle to find an extension cable they can run up the stairs. Fortunately, the number of public recharge points is rising fast. Westminster city council has already installed 60 “juice points” – 12 on-street and 48 in its car parks. Customers pay an annual registration fee of £75 and can then recharge free of charge. For about £200 a year they can also get free parking in their car park of choice. Camden and Islington councils are now following Westminster’s lead.

EDF, which has part-funded the Westminster charge points, is also installing them in shopping centre car parks. A spokesman for the energy company said it hoped to have 250 across the UK within the next couple of years. Sainsbury’s has a charging point at its store in Greenwich, southeast London, and its new store in Dartford, Kent, will have one.

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