We’re at Mercedes-Benz World in Surrey today, but not to admire all the cars sporting a three-pointed star. Up among the rafters, at attic level in the steel and glass showroom, you can find the silver arrows’ ugly sibling: Smart.

Way down at ground level, round the back, a Smart ForTwo coupé awaits us, liveried in white and metallic green. We are about to test drive a second-generation electric Smart ED, complete with its Tesla-derived lithium-ion battery, and we’re keen to see how it compares to the first generation Smart ED we drove in September.

Our car is a German-registered, left-hand-drive convertible – similar but not identical to the cars that will take part in the UK public trial later this year. They will all be right-hookers with fixed roofs.

Inside, the Smart is virtually unaltered compared to its fossil-fuelled brothers and sisters. Two green-rimmed pods on the dashboard keep the driver up to speed with the state of battery, the left gauge showing battery reserves and the right giving a swingometer indication of how discharge or regeneration of energy is going.

The stubby gearlever, down between the seats, offers an unfussy linear arrangement of park, reverse, neutral and drive options . There’s only one forward ratio. Ahead of the lever we note a round, red panic button that can shut off the high-voltage electrical system, but apparently this will not feature on the trial cars.

Switched on, in gear, handbrake off and feet off the pedals, and the Smart is silent and motionless. There’s no trace of the thrum or vibration that kept us company in the first generation car. The slight throttle hesitation we noticed last time has also been cured. Response is now instant and fine control is faithful. Stroke the accelerator gently and the car inches forward smoothly and gracefully, push on firmly and the car responds promptly with a decent amount of urge.

We play at drag-racing on the closed Mercedes circuit, and while no sports cars were left alarmed by our pace, the Smart ED is more than capable of city sprints between traffic lights. There’s a noticeable notch at the end of the accelerator’s travel, and pushing the pedal beyond it opens up a go-faster mode. Normal output from the electric motor is only 27bhp, but burying the pedal yields 40bhp for up to two minutes. You can certainly feel the difference.

The battery pack has clearly given the Smart ED a usefully low centre of gravity, while the extra weight – 140kg more than a diesel Smart – keeps all four wheels firmly planted. Our emergency stop from a terminal-velocity 60mph offers little drama, the ABS-equipped brakes proving more than equal to the task despite the extra weight. We’ve read elsewhere that the transition between hydraulic and regenerative braking can be less than smooth on some electric Smarts, but we try and fail to replicate the issue. It seems that the braking has received some successful polishing from Smart’s engineers.

On a dry surface, we also find no trace of understeer and remarkably little body roll. We try a full-throttle slalom from rest and run out of arm-twirling skill before the Smart runs out of body control or grip. Unfortunately, our minder won’t let us take the car onto the water-soaked skid-pan to assess the car’s wet-weather manners.

All in all, the second-generation Smart ED feels like a significantly better car than its predecessor. No doubt the 100 recipients of UK trial vehicles will be happy with their rides – the first will be handed over in the summer.

As good as the car is, though, we still feel that the trial is a tall order financially. Handing over £4,000-plus for just the first year in a Smart ED seems like too much for too little, to us. No doubt Smart will have no trouble finding 100 willing volunteers for its market research trial – but we fear the results will be firmly skewed towards the driving habits of the comfortably well-heeled.

Nissan’s plans to bring electric cars to market continue to take shape, with the launch this week of a new promotional web site - Electric-Mobility.com. This joins the Sustainable-Mobility.org site offered by Nissan’s electric-car partner Renault. The new site is backed up by Twitter, YouTube and Facebook pages.

The online push is an attempt to get information into the hands of people who might, perhaps, be persuaded to buy a Nissan electric car when they go on sale next year. According to Christian Costaganna, EV product manager for Nissan Europe, only 21 per cent of the public are inclined to believe that an electric four-wheeler might meet their transport needs, but that the number rises to 47 per cent after suitable “education”. Success in persuading less than half of the sample might not sound overwhelmingly positive, but Costaganna is clearly a glass-half-full kind of guy. He prefers to point out that a consumer awareness programme might more than double the potential market for the upcoming Nissan Leaf.

The sceptical 53 per cent, who remain unconvinced by electric cars even after Nissan has bombarded their neurons, presumably have noticed the dearth of places to plug in a depleted EV. This is a malady dubbed “range anxiety”, the main symptom being an acute distrust that your battery-powered ride will get you where you want to go and, crucially, back again. Fortunately this complaint is being cured, in various ways and in various places. On Wednesday, Nissan invited GreenMotor.co.uk to the Geneva Motor Show to learn about these efforts first-hand. We met spokespeople from the many places that are investing in EV infrastructure, from Monaco to Milton Keynes.

It’s heartening to hear that the city of Barcelona will have 190 charging points by the end of the year, and that Portugal will have 1,300 ordinary charge points plus 50 fast-charge points on major roads by the end of next year. The Dutch city of Amsterdam has 50 charging points today but expects to have 200 by Christmas and 2,000 a year later. Milton-Keynes expects to have the infrastructure to support 1,000 electric vehicles by 2014 – most of which the city expects to be public service vehicles. It’s also for funding to trial inductive charging – which uses cables buried in the road to send power to an electric car while it’s still in motion.

Ireland, with a clear view of the Atlantic to the west, is a great place to harvest wind power, we learned. By 2012, it expects its growing population of windmills to reap more power at night than the country currently needs. EVs would provide the perfect way to suck up that excess capacity – particularly in a country where 80 per cent of the population own their own homes and most have a driveway or garage.

One North East – the regional development agency for the North East of England – expects to have 710 smart charging points, 350 standard points, 12 rapid chargers and 240 domestic points within two years - all within the 20-by-45-mile oblong that contains Newcastle, Sunderland and Middlesbrough. This area also contains the Washington factory that will churn out EV batteries for Nissan and NEC from 2012 and may – if the decision goes the way of Nissan’s Sunderland plant – be responsible for building the Leaf for Europe.

One North East is already thinking well beyond the need to install plug-in points. The organisation’s Manufacturing & Productivity Manager, Colin Herron, explains plans to spend £8m on a college to train 1,000 people per year in electric-vehicle skills.

“It’s not just the skills to build EVs,” Herron says, “we also need to train breakdown services, ambulance and emergency services.”
Herron adds that efforts to think ahead have already paid dividends. “If there is a car crash, there are standard ways of cutting the car to get occupants out. The fire service tend to lift people out backwards and Smith Electric Vehicles, for example, changed the routing of cables in their vans after learning that the fireman’s first cut would have gone through a high-voltage cable.”

A Herron goes on to say, we are just starting to understand the questions that we will need to answer as the world moves towards zero-emissions motoring. “In the future, if there’s a pile-up involving battery cars, petrol cars, and hydrogen cars – what do the fire brigade put on the fire”

It’s clear that producing electric cars, and providing a means to recharge them, are only two pieces of a more complex puzzle. We hope to see more of the picture completed in the near future.

Our wander around the halls of the Geneva Motor Show yesterday started at the Nissan stand. The pre-production Leaf electric car looks much more attractive, cohesive and striking in real life, in its pearlescent paint, than in pictures. The rear three quarters is our favourite angle. As with all the other photos we’ve seen, this one doesn’t do the car justice. Styling is, of course, the least of its challenges - we are still waiting to learn exactly how much the Leaf will cost, for example. Nissan is still sticking to the line that it will be cost-competitive with conventional cars, after government incentives, at launch. It also predicts that economies of mass production will mean the cost will drop enough to remain competitive beyond 2012, when some target markets will begin to withdraw stimulus funding. The UK’s electric-car handouts halt in January 2014.

Pininfarina’s Bluecar turns out to be taller than we’d expected, judging from the images we’d seen to date. Somewhat the opposite of the Leaf, it’s also, sadly, not quite as lovely on the eyeball as in pictures. Black paint on the slabby sills might create a svelte profile on camera, but it doesn’t really fool the eye in person. The Bluecar is still about 99 per cent more attractive than most electric car prototypes, of course. Oh, and the model in the purple dress wouldn't get out of the way for our snap. Or, indeed, smile.

Opel’s Ampera was the only dirty car among a host of polished and preened metal at Geneva. This particular rolling prototype was driven 300-odd miles to the show from Rüsselsheim, rather than cadging a lift aboard a truck, so the mud was a badge of pride. Clearly Opel still feels the need to persuade people that its range-extended electric vehicle can actually work in the real world of grime, brake dust and blown fuses.

Renault's Twizy electric tandem two-seater had subtly altered since we last clapped eyes on it, in Paris. The wheels have changed - they are now smaller, and no longer covered in their striking hexagonal spats. The new wheels make quite a radical difference to the Twizy's unique stance - it now seems lower, longer, less fragile looking, but also a lot less striking. It's a shame to see these sensible shoes appear on such a rebellious concept. What next - proper doors?

Heuliez has given a new name to its upcoming electric three-seater, it's no longer the Friendly but the Mia. Not much else seems to have changed, although the styling around the nose is now less cartoonish, and the windscreen is flatter than in the Friendly. The packaging is still fantastic, providing an airy, spacious interior in a tiny footprint. Not very macho, though, even if it does share a seating layout with the McLaren F1

The Honda CR-Z turns out to be as small and perfectly formed as expected. Apart, that is, from its droopy rear window profile and predictably brittle plastic interior. If it goes as well as it looks and feels from the stationary driver's seat, it will be a hit, unlike the unfortunate Insight on which it's based.

We’re off to the Geneva Motor Show on Wednesday, so we thought we’d round up the cars we’re planning on prodding when we get to the show. Not that an exhibition hall is necessarily the best place to sample a new car – we sincerely hope to slip behind the wheel of at least some of the following cars on a real road in the coming weeks and months.

Honda CR-Z
The European version of Honda’s pocket hybrid sports coupe will go on sale this summer. We like Honda hybrids, despite the slightly below-par feel of their interiors. We’re hoping that the CR-Z will succeed in appeasing both head and heart, providing athletic élan when it’s wanted combined with fuel-sipping parsimony when it’s not.

Nissan Leaf
We drove the Nissan Cube EV-02 prototype last year and fell in love with its silent and silky delivery, so we have high hopes for Nissan’s big electric car gamble. At least a full five grand from the government will help tip the odds in Nissan’s favour. The Nissan Leaf might look like an old-model Renault Mégane that’s been melted in a microwave, but we suspect its frog face and slippery shape will grow on us. We want to try out Nissan’s innovative satellite navigation system, which greys out the parts of the map you can’t reach without a recharge, to see well it responds to changes in driving style.

Opel Ampera
Another big production electric car gamble – the European version of Chevrolet’s Volt looked surprisingly attractive in the metal (in stationary, prototype form at least) when we finally clapped eyes on it at Millbrook last year. The range-extended electric car concept promises to be both practical and economical. We do wonder what it will be like to drive up steep hills, though, given all the hardware it has to lug around – batteries, fuel tank, engine and motor. We’d also like to see how well it stops in the rain. And how it manages the transition from pure battery power to petrol-electric mode. Despite these points of keen interest, we have high hopes for this transatlantic transplant. Interestingly, both the Vauxhall Ampera and the Chevrolet Volt will be sold alongside each other in the UK from 2012. We wonder how the two cars will differ in price, given that Chevrolet is a budget brand in Blighty.

Aston Martin Cygnet
Some people think a Toyota dressed up like a boil-wash DB9 is a travesty, but we beg to differ. After all, it can’t be much fun piloting your ordinary Aston super coupe between the City and Mayfair, say, when your eye-line is level with a bike courier’s crevice. Why not cram the same sense of occasion into something more suited to the city? We would have loved the Toyota iQ 3 but for its brittle, ill-appointed interior, and it’s on the Cygnet’s insides where Aston has exercised the bulk of its skills. True, the James Bond image is hard to pull off when piloting a car barely bigger than a cocktail napkin, but at least you might cross a city and arrived stirred but not shaken.

Audi A1
It may look like the result of a drunken shag between an Austin Maestro and a Fiat 500, and it’s not half as clever as an Audi A2, but it is progress, of a sort. We applaud the welcome wave of small cars with big ambitions, which prove that size really shouldn’t matter, and of which the Audi A1 will be the latest and probably the greatest. It’ll be much better inside than a Mini, a much better bet for residuals than a Citroën DS3, and much less likely to go bzzzzt-phtt-kerding than an Alfa Mito. The littlest Audi will be expensive but nonetheless a safe bet. We can’t wait to slip behind the wheel – the best place to avoid looking at its awful exterior.

That’s our pick of the new cars – we’ll let you know what else catches our eye later in the week.

After the expected long pause for fact finding, finding of facts and general dithering, the UK government yesterday revealed details of its promised ultra-low-CO2 car incentive scheme.

Was it worth the wait? Well, yes it was. Starting in January 2011, buyers of electric cars, hydrogen fuel-cell cars and plug-in hybrid cars will be eligible for a 25 per cent contribution from the taxpayer, capped at £5,000. The discount is offered per vehicle, rather than per buyer, so if you buy a pair of electric cars – one to drive while the other is charging, say – then you will qualify for two discounts.

The key word repeated in our laboured sentences above is “car”, as opposed to “vehicle”. Quadricycles don’t qualify. So potential buyers of Reva’s G-Wiz electric runabout – that rare and probably now endangered breed – needn’t bide their time till the New Year to make their purchase as there won’t be any fiscal easing on offer come January.

Here are the hoops that your prospective low-carbon car must zip through to let you claim the cash, according to the Department for Transport’s Office for Low Emission Vehicles (Olev):

• Pure battery-electric, plug-in hybrid or hydrogen fuel cell power source
• Zero emissions in use, or less than 75g/km for plug-in hybrids
• At least 70 miles range for BEVs, or 10 miles on battery alone for PHEVs
• At least 60mph flat out
• At least three years or 75,000 miles of vehicle warranty
• At least three years warranty on the battery, or five years (presumably at extra cost) if the buyer demands it
• “Reasonable” battery life – whatever that means – left at the end of the three years (we’re not sure how the government proposes to police that one, given that the grant is paid at the start of the three years...)
• Crash-tested to European, US, Japanese or an equivalent standard for cars
• Compliance with electrical safety standards both when in use and when recharging

In short, the rules are great news if you are, say, a large established car maker with a big, complex product in the final stages of buffing – Nissan Leaf, Vauxhall Ampera, Renault Fluence, Plug-in Prius, roll a step forward.

Equally, the rules are bad news if you are, instead, a small, niche electric car maker with a small, fragile, slow but simple product already on the market – tough luck Reva G-Wiz, Aixam Mega City, EuAuto MyCar and Tazzari Zero. If you ever doubted that our government prefers big businesses to plucky startups, get real.

Other nuggets of note? ECC’s converted Citroen C1, the Evie, will scrape through the criteria. Mitsubishi’s marvellous i-Miev will qualify with ease, as will its clone-brothers the Citroen C-Zero and Peugeot iOn.

Unfortunately, Renault’s tandem two-seat Twizy, which we fully expect to be a disruptive, breakthrough product when it ships next year will not qualify. Bad decision, Olev.

Still, there will be a general election in the UK between now and the start of the scheme, so nothing here is etched in silicon. Perhaps the next government will have other ideas about the kind of cars it wants to encourage to flourish on our city streets.

One of the non-optional extras you’ll get if you cough up £101,900 for a Tesla Roaster Sport electric car is, it seems, a constant reminder that you’ve purchased a fledgling product. If you want a quality fit and finish, buy a Porsche, as the steamed-up headlamps of this yellow Tesla attest.

We were tempted to write that spending 100 grand with Tesla bought you build quality on a par with a Reva G-Wiz, but that’s unfair. We doubt that condensation is a G-Wiz issue – there are too many big ventilation gaps.

The last car we can recall that suffered such a marked misting of the eyes was actually in the same rarefied price bracket as the tiny Tesla - the 1990s Aston Martin DB7 had headlamps that were equally prone to cataracts.

The complaint, along with sundry other issues that arise with a low-volume car, never harmed Aston – such is the magical value of its brand – and it seems likely that Tesla’s early adopters will be similarly inclined to turn a blind eye to such fiddling faults.