Who ya gonna call when your G-Wiz conks out?

14 May 2007

Seeing all those pictures of crashed G-Wiz quadricycles made us wonder what happens if the worst doesn’t happen - but you do have a little knock, a minor breakdown, or simply run out of juice two miles from the nearest socket and can’t continue your journey.

At least one member of the G-Wiz Owners Club has ended up with curly tail between legs, calling out the AA to trailer home a plastic pig with a dead electric motor. Another member pointed to the Environmental Transport Association (ETA), which is a sort of lentil-fuelled alternative to the mainstream breakdown services, but has not had to call them out yet.

Most G-Wizzes on the road are still relatively new, of course, but might be expected to break down a little more often as they rack up the miles shuddering their way over London's scabrous and pot-holed roads. Punctures are also an issue, bearing in mind there’s no spare wheel and not every gash in a tyre can be filled with a can of aerosol goo.

We got in touch with the AA and the RAC to find out if their patrols are equipped to do more than suck teeth and scratch heads at the scene of an electric-car breakdown. Would they attempt to diagnose faults and effect a roadside repair or simply winch a stricken G-Wiz onto a low-loader?

The response from the RAC was suitably encouraging: “Our technical team always looks to ‘get under the bonnet’ of new vehicles as soon as possible after they are introduced to the market, and indeed in the case of the G-Wiz we have recently attended their premises to undertake a data gathering exercise on the workings of the vehicle,” said RAC spokesman Jon Day. “This information is then fed into the central computer system that our patrols access at the roadside in order that they have the correct information available to them as they attempt to fix vehicles.”


The AA has so far not responded, but we will pass on any comment as it arrives.

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