Mitsubishi i-MiEV European rollout and price announced

High prices come with the territory. All the rare earth metals and expensive manufacturing techniques used in this type of vehicle makes the price go up. Maybe someday, hopefully soon, as demand grows and production ramps up, they will be able to mass produce these cars in such numbers that the prices will go down. Until the rare earth metals start to get scarce, some experts say that will happen 2012, which I don't believe. But geologists did find $1 trillion worth of the stuff in Afghanistan, and you thought the war was bad now!

The problem is that hardly anyone's buying them, so money isn't being made and research into making them cheaper and better isn't happening. There need to be better incentives for early adopters and, frankly, the idea needs to be wrapped in a more attractive package. That way people can shake off the image of electric cars being little snot boxes. The only pretty one currently is the Tesla, which is a hideously expensive specialist car that got criticised on TopGear for not working. We need a new-from-the-ground-up electric car that's good-looking and accessible to get people on board. Oh, and firmly below ?40k.