Christine Benning is right (Letters, 23 May). We need a cheap, mass-market, fully electric car. It is called a Nissan Leaf and is the market leader. Secondhand ones, costing around £10,000, are good value and keep running very well. A £17,000 price gets a more recent one with a longer range. The 2018 model is around £27,000, with a much improved range. The new 2019 one has a range greatly increased again, at £30,000- plus. The new Tesla is half the price of previous models. The Renault Zoe is another popular electric car. If we keep saying they don’t exist, we discourage people from looking. There are plenty available at Nissan garages and online agents.
We bought a two-year-old Leaf in 2017. We are paying a bit over £10,000, plus £2,000 reductions. We get free services for two years. We charge it with renewable electricity, to keep it zero-emissions. We have just had a beautiful holiday in Wales, clocking up 830 miles from Newcastle and back, costing £22 in electricity.
Stephen Emsley
Newcastle upon Tyne
• Christine Benning’s suggestion that we need an electric version of the Model T Ford is pointing to the problem, not the solution. The provision of individual petrol-powered transport for all is probably one of the 20th century’s biggest blunders. The answer to pollution and ecological damage lies before us, tried and tested.
The so-called Socialist Republic of South Yorkshire, one of the last redoubts of resistance to Thatcherism in the early 1980s, had a publicly subsidised public transport system that dramatically reduced the need for private cars. Thatcher’s deregulation of bus services is to blame for the present choked and choking state of our inner-city and suburban streets.
David Walker
Sheffield
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