On the road: Nissan Leaf

' I saved 691,229 trees! -Single-handedly, just this morning. No wonder I feel satisfied with me. I am practically God. "Photographs: Simon Stuart-Miller, on behalf of the guardian

I glide silently and-it must be said – ever so slightly smugly through London in my Nissan Leaf electric car. OOPS, I have violated the zone overloading, free have I remembered to pay? Ha, it doesn't matter, I don't have to. Tax disc? Exempt! I press a button on the dash, a message will appear: I have saved a total of … 691,229 trees! Single-handedly, just this morning. No wonder I feel satisfied with me. I am practically God.

I am also comfortable, safe and not at all embarrassed. Blade, unlike some electric vehicles (EVs), is a proper car with everything you would expect from a decent car. It even looks quite stylish. I'm cool, I am green, I am the future. Nissan leaf is absolutely brilliant. Apart from a few small things. Like the fact that for me would be a little better than useless.

I live like most mobilised (probably only people to consider an EV, given their limited scope), in a terrace. No tilslutningsanlaeg parking, in other words, what must we do, run a lead next to the mail box and across the sidewalk, under voltage up by pedestrians as they can pass and being sabotaged by every kid in the neighborhood?

The alternative is to charge the second place. My screen telling me that the nearest place is 10 kilometres away at a shopping centre in Watford. But I do not want to go shopping in Watford in four hours while the car charges up. I will not go anywhere in four hours.

The infrastructure will be better, there will be multiple charging points. But electric car makes sense only if you can charge it on one of the places you use a lot of time – ie, home or work. For those of us who can't either, or who do not want to (or shouldn't) drive to work, it makes little sense.

And £ 26,000 (even with Government incentive) is a lot to spend on a car that is not nearly as useful as a car that cost one-third of the price. Some people will be able to make the numbers work – many more of us will have to wait until the EVs get better. Not only infrastructure, but the technology, too. I use is not really a car in London, to be honest. In cycle and use public transport. I need only to go out of town; and a magazine 110-mile (tops) range limit my choice of destination.

My test car came from Nissan store in Oxfordshire. It would probably have done it under its own steam (so to speak), but that would have left very little in the fuel tank (so to speak) for me, given my charging issues, would have been problematic. As it arrived in a trailer pulled by a huge gas guzzling four-wheel pickup truck. There is an irony, is there a place that does not?

Price £ 25,990
Top speed 90 mph
Acceleration 0-62 mph in 11.9 seconds
Range 110 kilometres
CO2 emissions 0
Eco rating 9/10
In two words Not yet

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