Dr Peter Wells of Cardiff Business School's Centre for Automotive Industry Research (co-author of Car Futures - Rethinking the automotive industry beyond the American model”, available from Trend Tracker), speculated recently in Automotiveworld.com's Environment Weekly that BP's fiasco could prove a tipping point in the evolution of a market for electric vehicles. Market and public sentiment can turn bad on a dime, and BP's bonds have dropped to junk status, although with oil at $75 a barrel, BP is still gushing cash flow and can easily afford the $billion+ Gulf clean-up cost, and pay a dividend to its US shareholders.

Moving from the horrific to the trivial, my own diesel car sprang a fuel leak last night, and the sulphurous, stinking mess it left on the street was a reminder that there's nothing nice about oil, except what it permits us to do. But breaking oil dependency is going to be hard, BP or no BP. Working on a report the future of the electric car for Trend Tracker, I pay a lot of attention to the renewable energy sectors without which EVs can't do what oil-haters and greens hope for them. EVs are being hyped no end, but there's scant evidence of industry, money markets and governments joining forces to accelerate the switch from hydrocarbons with the urgency required.

Talking of urgency, the German government's refusal yesterday to lend to Opel is only the fifth story on the BBC website's business page as I write. And GM's site has yet to respond at all. The Obama administration has been lauded for allowing US automotive capacity to shrink to a probably sustainable level, and the Europeans condemned for funking the necessary restructuring. The freshly sanitized, right-sized GM can hardly complain if the Germans, now saddled with bankrolling the whole Eurozone, apply some of the same medicine that helped save what's left of Detroit.

Toby Procter

Trend Tracker Limited

0870 421 4350

aftermarket report bodyshop market car finance electric vehicles car servicing