THE prime minister has pledged £90m in government money to help make Britain “the European capital for electric cars”, a promise that has already sparked interest from motor-industry giants such as General Motors.

Gordon Brown made his commitment at the British International Motor Show last week — arriving in a motorcade of Jaguars and Range Rovers. He said the money would be available over five years to support electric, hybrid and other environmentally clean car projects.

It is far from clear how this money will be spent. There were plenty of environmentally friendly cars at the motor show in London’s Excel exhibition centre. Most were small city cars imported from as far away as China and India, but there were also high-performance models from Tesla (an American company that subcontracts chassis construction to Lotus in Norfolk) and Lightning, a British start-up firm.

Of the leading manufacturers represented at the show, General Motors and Renault-Nissan have the biggest commitment to the development of electric cars. Carl-Peter Forster, president of General Motors Europe, took the opportunity to pitch a deal to Brown.

GM has already previewed its Flexstream concept car — a hybrid vehicle that is part of the company’s E-Flex programme — which it hopes to launch in America by the end of 2010. By 2011 it intends to sell the car in Europe as a Vauxhall or Saab. Although very cheap to run, the price will be high — about £32,000.

Like other carmakers, GM is faced with the high cost of reducing the fuel consumption and thereby carbon-dioxide emissions of its conventional cars to meet forthcoming European rules that are expected to require a fleet average of 130 g/km carbon dioxide.

Forster said that it was seeking a national sponsor for a “super credit” scheme that would allow ultra-low carbon-dioxide vehicles (below 50g/km) — like its E-Flex cars — to offset larger and more polluting models. If Britain was prepared to champion this idea within the EU, GM would consider making its electric vehicles at the Ellesmere Port plant on Merseyside.

The first E-Flex model will be based on the next generation of Vauxhall Astra, which will be made at Ellesmere Port. GM anticipates first-year production of 30,000 cars for Europe. Bob Lutz, GM vice chairman in charge of production development, believes that worldwide production of E-Flex cars could be 1m by 2020.

Unlike Renault, Nissan and many smaller companies that are climbing on to the electric bandwagon, GM does not believe in the pure electric car. E-Flex models are hybrids, driven by an electric motor and designed to be plugged into the mains but also include a small petrol engine to charge the batteries if the driver wants to go further than the 50 miles provided by the household charge.

Batteries remain the biggest hurdle for the all-purpose electric car. The advanced lithium-ion battery packs for E-Flex will cost £5,000 apiece. GM is about to announce which of its two development partners — CPI, a subsidiary of LG of Korea, and Continental — will provide the cells for E-Flex but, because it believes that electrics will play a large part in the future of the car, it is now bringing battery technology in-house.

Renault-Nissan has linked with Project Better Place, run by Silicon Valley entrepreneur Shai Agassi, which is to develop an electric-car infrastructure in Israel and Denmark — a network of service stations that swap depleted battery packs for fully charged ones.

This idea was rejected by GM on cost and logistical grounds, but it is an essential step if electric vehicles are to stand any chance of gaining ground on their oil-dependent cousins.

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