'I do believe the current push by governments for the supposed 'green' electric vehicles will be upon us quicker than we think, where will that leave enthusiasts like us on this forum who enjoy tinkering with oily mechanical bits?'

Nick, the difficulty is energy density, it only takes a couple of minutes to refuel a petrol/diesel vehicle and have a 300+ mile range, to do that in a electric car takes at least an hour, so your average service station can refuel 20+ cars per hour x number of pumps, whereas you can recharge 1 electric car per hour x number of charging stations. So the major drawback to journey times will be as the number of pure electric cars on the road increases. When you also consider that the UK does not have the electrical generating capacity (or plan to) to power all the stuff it already does + an all electric car population, its very easy to see that hybrid petrol/diesel/hydrogen - electric vehicles will be here for a significant time, for anybody doing long journeys outside an urban environment. So don't worry hydro-carbons are going to be around much longer than us!!