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Well that's the hydrogen part of my answer challenged.
The Marai IS here, now, available. Public space travel is still quite some way off.
Nope, battery is still there to be charged from the hydrogen 1.5kwh in the Marai to run the electric drive motor, the Hyundai ix35 has a 24kwh battery.
Now I agree that hydrogen can be used as a method to store the off peak/excess electricity. Pretty much like all the EVs that charge on Economy 7 at night. Still a huge and inefficient use of electricity.

Range is still the deal breaker for most. But the Tesla Model S has a better range than the Marai or ix35 with unbelievable performance.
The Hyundai does about 100kms from 1kg of hydrogen cost about £12.
So 56kwh for 62miles @ £12. My car uses about 15kwh for the same distance costs £2 in electricity from grid at full rate. Solar or Economy 7 is less.
Correct about the battery rental with the £13k Zoe. But offset against fuel costs. Alternatively get the iZoe for £18K. My diesel Clio list price is £17K.

Good to hear you enjoy using it Blueskier. I'm surprised you took it as far as Nottingham. How long did it take?

I am interested in how effective the heater or aircon is and how much using either reduces the range.

And I think you can expect a slow degredation in the range as the battery ages. Particularly if you use fast chargers a lot.

I don't really think a hydrogen fuel cell powered car is likely, although a number of manufacturers favour this approach. If you are going to use hydrogen, the best way to contain it is as part of a long hydrocarbon chain molecule as is done in conventional fuel and burn it in an IC engine. Amazingly, a litre of diesel contains more hydrogen molecules than a litre of liquid hydrogen! Raw liquid hydrogen is really nasty stuff.

The most practical approach, it seems to me, is to replace oil refineries with synthetic fuel factories, using atmospheric CO2 and water as feedstocks. Energy to do this could come from the rapidly growing renewable sources like wind, tide and solar. Already places like Denmark produce more electricity than they can use at times. It seems sensible to divert it into making road transport fuel.

The chemistry required to do this is well understood, tried and tested. The Germans in the last war made diesel fuel from coal! It has the advantage that it would render existing road vehicles carbon neutral, and save us the trouble and expense of constructing a new supply infrastructure to keep them in fuel. Hybrid technology - an IC engine supplying a battery and an electric drive - would help this by improving the mileage.

But battery cars, it seems to me, have no future. Despite much trumpeted advances in battery technology, the energy density of these things remains around 1 or 2 percent of a fuel tank. and costs a great deal more. Far more than can be saved on buying fuel.

I like the hybrid idea: McLaren P1 anyone?

F1 double deck trolley buses. THAT's the way to go electric.........

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejnRrN3QhgE

Wiki peeps of a certain age will also remember the sound track!

A lot of Arriva buses are now electric

Electric or electric assisted? I thought they had standard diesel engines which switch off when stopped but the starting procedure also drives the wheels for a smooth set-off, but there were problems when they first introduced them.

I think only the little dinky buses were fully electric used on some special service?

Excoriator, I also enjoy saving money. I am not a green eco warrior, I am just tight.
Nottingham is not too far, 125 miles each way. Stop at Keele services for a rapid charge. A lot of it is slow on the M6 due to traffic and then the A50 cross country. Maybe 3 hours.
The Leaf has a new heat pump heater which is very efficient, and heated seats and heated steering wheel. Air con probably affects range more than heating. Range is obviously affected but not by any great degree. Maybe 5%?
The evidence is rapid charges do not impact on battery life, see here http://www.solwayrenewables.com/nissan-leaf-taxis-surely/ This is the taxi company that have hit over 100000 miles in a Leaf with their own rapid charger with no degradation. They run nearly a full EV fleet now. There is also a taxi firm in Blackpool with something like 30 Leafs.
I believe hydrogen is more of a dead end, no infrastructure, extremely expensive answer to a problem that BMW have solved with the i3. An electric car with a small engine to generate extra electricity for further range using a fuel that is relatively cheap and can be purchased pretty much anywhere.
EV is not for everyone. If I didn't have a second vehicle I doubt I would have taken the step. Now I have I wont go back. My 2 best mates have also bought EVs on the strength of my experience.
What annoyed me about most of the respondents to your original question was they were totally dismissive of EV cars, having no experience of them, but were praising hydrogen. So they wont even consider an EV which has an infrastructure bigger than petrol, the grid! I cant put diesel in my car at work, or home, or a campsite or friends houses but I can charge my EV.
But they cant wait for this magical hydrogen. If they want to keep forking out for fuel which is taxed to death crack on. I will power my car from the sun and some grid electricity at a reasonable rate or the free chargers that are available.
Not for everyone but the sheep will carry on being sheep fooled by horror stories fed to them.

"Most"??? There was only me advocating hydrogen and I have not stated my experience nor inexperience of electric vehicles.

If I want to drive from here to London and back in one day which is fairly normal in a petrol/diesel vehicle its just not practical in an EV, there are finite limits to battery technology and we are very close to those limits.

Winter traffic jams are going to be a concern in EVs, I guess there will be a market for little generators to help in emergencies. I think the RAC or AA have a small topup capability from some of their vans to get you to the nearest charging point but that won't help you get out of a traffic jam while you are watching your "fuel" gauge deplete if you have the heaters on - take some warm clothing.

It would be very feasible in a hydrogen vehicle.

Around town and relatively local journeys an EV is great but there will also be a requirement for longer range vehicles, while both could sit beside each other, in my opinion, once hydrogen becomes commonplace then it will become dominant.

There are other stored power solutions and primary power solutions which are possible but hydrogen is the far more feasible within the near future.

I have driven three electric vehicles and couldn't particularly fault them apart from price, range and at the time, size and battery life which are now less of a problem. I love electric vehicles, I have costed up replacing one of my petrol engines with electric, annoyingly its the cost of the motor that made it infeasible.

I also have concern over the safety of lithium batteries, there is nothing you can do to stop an explosion once thermal runaway or an internal short starts, they need to be physically and thermally shielded, I've not looked at what levels they employ at the moment but I suspect they are inadequate for the amount of energy stored that can be released extremely quickly.

Hydrogen is very dangerous but the specifications for physical shielding has been long established, leak detection and shut off is relatively easy and cheap.

There also could be supply problems for EVs:- Lithium, graphite and rare earths are essential. Lithium is not in shortage at the moment but it could be eaten up quite fast, the other two are far more uncertain.

Well the infrastructure for EVs exist only until they become popular. Then huge problems emerge. How long is a 'fast' charge, by the way? 30 minutes?

You are unlikely to make up the cost of a leaf - twice that of a conventional vehicle even with a government subsidy - unless you do a truly phenomenal mileage. The average car does about 40 miles a day! Savings might amount to £1. Are you going to keep the car for 10,000 days, or 27 years - the break even point?

That you have to stop every hour and a half for 30 minutes would make any long journey a misery for me, and I believe for most people. I can make it to london and back on a single tanks of diesel.

You evidently like the car, and that is the main thing. But it is never going to be a good choice for most of us. I notice that in the USA, sales of EVs - which only became briefly popular in California - are now on the wane, despite a lot more models coming onto the market. See http://insideevs.com/monthly-plug-in-sales-scorecard/

I can't see hydrogen ever becoming popular. The platinum catalysts are expensive, so are high pressure tanks, and I don't know how they would tolerate a crash.

As to lithium it is not a particularly rare element, and neither are rare earths like Neodymium despite their name. They are needed to make magnets for in the motors which are used in both battery and hydrogen fuel cell cars.

I own a narrowboat, powered by Diesel. I would love to convert that to all electric. The weight of batteries is not a problem there, and it would be quite feasible to do it. What kills it, however, is the lack of infrastructure. When Telford and Brunel built the canal network they foolishly neglected to include charging points at frequent intervals along them!

Rare earths aren't rare but almost all production is in one country - China with small amounts from Australia and America and maybe others in yet smaller amounts.

Lead-in time for new mines and production facilities are estimated as 5 to 10 years and not many are trying because of China's cheap labour rates.

Graphite is similar with China being the main producer by far and despite numerous mines (over 200) they are not keeping up with demands.

Having so much reliance on one country makes graphite and rare earths to be classed as a high risk of supply.

Hydrogen tanks have specified crash tests etc, I believe the tanks are now carbon fibre. If you are in a crash severe enough to crack the tanks then you would be highly unlikely to survive the same crash even if the tanks weren't there.

Hydrogen is not trusted because of the Hindenburg disaster but most of the damage was caused by the diesel fuel and the flammable skin of the airship, the hydrogen burn went straight up in the air almost immediately because it is so much lighter than air.

Solar panels are great on narrow boats

DD, accepted you and Phil were advocating hydrogen.
I made the assumption you had no experience of EVs because that was the original question and you never said you had any. So now I know you have driven 3 EV's and you reservations are currently range and price. Price is coming down and range is going up and it is still relatively early days. Price is surprisingly low when fuel costs are factored in (or should that be factored out?)
There is a place for all types of vehicles and power sources and if in the future hydrogen is a cheap workable option then great I may well be an early adopter there as well.
However, I have a need for a vehicle today. I have a short commute as does my wife. I also have access to an ICE car. I can get a free ICE car from Nissan for 14 days a year. I have solar panels. I do only occasional longer journeys but since having the Leaf only once have I chickened out and took the Captur. That was a trip to Lincolnshire which is a wasteland of rapid chargers.

Excoriator
Using the 40 mile a day trip is spot on. About a gallon of unleaded. £5 at the moment.
In my EV that would be about £1.30 from the grid, free from my solar. Free from a lot of public charge points. In reality a mix of both so call it 80 pence to err on the pessimistic side. So about £4 per day saving.
Each and every day. Do more miles make a bigger saving.
My top spec Leaf Tekna was £17500 invoice price. Leather, roomy, lovely drive, satnav, internet controlled heating and cooling, 360 cameras. Its a nice place to be.
I haven't bought it, I have it on a PCP, no deposit, £190 a month for 2 years. Hand it back, get next generation or go back to an ICE.
I will never convince you guys. Okay. You will never convince me. If it doesn't suit your needs an EV is not for you, it does require a change of mindset. I will continue to enjoy my choice.

I couldn't careless if lithium and other elements are rare expensive or damaging to the environment. My actions wont save or destroy the planet.

Final point, my 2 mates got exactly the same car and same deal. We are not all internet geeks.
One works the line at Jag, its paid for itself in fuel savings on his commute. The other has been in the motor trade for 25 years. His saving comes from his trips to his caravan in North Wales which are effectively free from fuel cost. It simply fits in to our usage.

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree, Blueskier. It evidently suits your requirements very well and it was not my intention to criticise you for it. Continue to enjoy it.

It would not suit mine well at all, and I feel that in many - if not most cases - it would not. One reason is that not everyone in this country lives in a house with room for parking and charging. If you live in a terraced house for instance, you would have to run a lead through a window across the pavement, and flat dwellers would face similar difficulties!

I feel that ICEs working in hybrid vehicles remains the way forward and fuel produced from renewable sources is probably the most environmentally sensible way of running them.

Far from it Excoriator. I believe we do agree. An Ev is a cheap usable option for some people but not the majority......yet.
A REX linked to a battery pack is a solution available now that makes an EV workable for all but a few although an expensive option. Excluding the Outlander which costs the same as the diesel version. Audi etron and Golf GTE. Choice and competition will improve things at a pace now the likes of VAG are in the field.

The reduction in oil price has had an impact on sales of EVs recently, especially the US. ALthough their fuel is so much cheaper they react much more strongly to fluctuations.
So even in California sales are down.
Not sure where i read it but i think Tesla still sold more cars last year worldwide than Jaguar. Not bad for a little start up (backed by billions of dollars of private and corporate investment).
No off road parking no EV is right. OLEV wont fund your free home charge point unless you have off road parking.
Some do but not for me. The woman who bought the one featured in the top gear debacle has no home charging, there is a Robert LLwelyn video of it her from his fully charged youtube channel. Makes interesting viewing, https://www.youtube.com/user/fullychargedshow the whole series not just that one.
Home refuelling convenience is an unexpected bonus, pull up and plug in in seconds. Come out in the morning with 100+ miles, a preheated defrosted car unplug in seconds and off we go.

I think EVs only really sold well in California, and I suspect the market is now pretty well saturated there. Diesels are, at last, beginning to grow in popularity there now I notice.

Tesla is backed by a huge publicity effort, and I think they are so expensive that they are unlikely to change the world of driving. I notice that Mr Musk has realised that he will be stuck with warehouses full of batteries churned out by his 'megafactory' as the cars have not increased their sales quite as well as expected, and is now pushing them in domestic storage batteries. A much more sensible applications in my opinion, but I think they too are overpriced. Far better to store power at grid level as pumped heat as is being done by http://www.isentropic.co.uk/. This is a much cheaper and more elegant solution.

I'm afraid I don't think much of Mr LLewellyn. His grasp of engineering is tenuous and it shows. He ignores real problems and presents only the good side of EVs. Perhaps his grasp of funding from the EV industry is firmer.

As to wanting to go to a pre-heated car on a frosty morning, this is something I have never felt a particularly strong desire for. I quite like running the engine for a few minutes and feeling the car warm up. Both front and rear screens are electrically heated anyway, and it takes only a minute or two for them to clear. It is a fairly rare event nowadays anyway, and I like having 500 plus miles of range far more than getting into a warm car. I suspect this feature has been included to disguise the fact that the heaters on EVs tend to be only just adequate in order to preserve the range. In an ICE engined cars normally have very powerful heaters and I reckon they chuck out about four or five kW or more.

As for 'range extenders' I think they are a hilarious admission of the failure of the EV concept!