The ECBG

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The ECBG

The Environmental Transport Association (ETA) has since 1992 produced an annual Car Buyers' Guide, which ranks the best cars on the new car market based on power, carbon dioxide emissions, fuel consumption and noise. The results give an idea of the greenest cars in Britain, but have never included electric vehicles because their limited performance and range was not comparable with petrol and diesel-powered cars.

Hybrid cars such as the Toyota Prius are sometimes referred to as electric, but whilst cars such as these are able to travel short distances without using their petrol or diesel engines they are not pure electric and do not benefit from the same potential environmental advantages.

Hybrid technology may triumph over pure electric in the long term, but such cars are not included in this guide because we consider that a vehicle carrying the weight of two engines makes less sense than an electric car or a super-efficient internal combustion engined vehicle.

As electric cars improve in terms of size, speed, range and recharging times, the Electric Car Buyers Guide offers a library of information about these fascinating vehicles, reviews of their performance and the ability to compare their relative merits.

Whilst there are very few pure electric cars available to buy at the time of writing, the small-scale producers responsible for the 1,500-odd electric cars and quadricycles on British roads today are about to be joined by large-scale manufacturers; Nissan is set to start selling the world's first mass-produced electric car, the Leaf, later this year.

As this guide grows, it will include details of electric bicycles, electric scooters and electric motorcycles.