UK faces a gruelling race against time to meet its electric car targets

If you are driving through North London in an electric car, head to Sainsbury's in Islington for a guaranteed free parking place and charging point.

For more than a year now, two freshly painted spaces have been waiting for electric car customers. I have never seen them used.

But this year is supposed to be the one when driving an electric car becomes a reality across the UK.

And now it seems that within two years we could even be watching professional drivers racing in electric cars. The European Commission has asked Formula One's governing body to stage a championship series for electric cars to create public interest for the new technology.

Nissan, General Motors and PSA Peugeot Citroen have launched battery-powered models in the US, Japan and Europe. By the end of this year there should be 12 models for car buyers to choose from as groups including Renault, Daimler and BMW bring out new products.

Last month, Nissan delivered several hundred of its new Leaf model, the first electric family hatchback, to the UK. By the end of the year it expects to have between 1,200 and 1,500 of the cars on Britain's roads.

That doesn't sound like many but the UK had only 55 electric cars on the road in 2009. The Government wants to have 1.7 million by 2020.

The Leaf has been hailed as the first mass-market electric car, but the reality is its £30,990 (Dh185,931) price tag means it still has only niche appeal.

Since January, a £5,000 subsidy from the British government has been available to buyers, but the price really needs to drop below £20,000 before the car will really begin to find takers. Only half of the 8,600 grants available for the next 12 months are likely to be claimed.

Besides the cost, the other main factor putting buyers off is "range anxiety" - the fear that you could be stranded with a flat battery somewhere between Land's End and John O'Groats.

Given that there are only between 400 and 500 charging points across the country and the range of the Leaf is less than 180km, this is a real concern.

And so we come to the role electric cars are hoped to play in reducing greenhouse gases.

Government figures show electric cars offer 40 per cent less carbon emissions than conventional vehicles. But it is wrong to describe electric cars as completely clean because the electricity that powers them is mostly, in the UK, generated by fossil fuels.

Car makers including Nissan are also coy about the carbon footprint of building the car, but this will matter less when the vehicles are replacing older models on the road.

The other main hurdle to get over before mass popularity beckons is indifference. Last week Norman Baker, a junior minister in the department of transport, said: "There is not public opposition [to electric cars], but public lethargy."

Mr Baker went on to say he was certain that once people saw the cars around, they would like them.

Electric cars have the potential to aid Britain's manufacturing industry. From 2013, the Leaf will be built in Sunderland, long an unemployment black spot.

The UK is still a major car making centre, despite the fact that its industry is now wholly foreign owned. But the industry could become obsolete in a decade unless it adapts and changes to new types of cars.

To some, electric vehicles will always be just "Noddy cars" - a joke and not for the serious petrol heads. But at these petrol prices, who is having the last laugh?

The industry has to help to promote the new vehicles, if there is ever to be mass acceptance.

Maybe when F1 teams spend as much on green technology and alternative energy as they do on their current machines, we'll know the race is really on.