The Lightning: Britain's take on electric sports cars

The Lightning GTS, an all-electric sports car coming from England next year, will go 0 to 60 in four seconds, the company says.

But what I like is the '60s styling and the Union Jack license plate.

The car is one of several relatively new entrants into the electric auto market. They can be roughly divided into three categories: sports car specialists (Tesla Motors, Lightning, Lightspeed) and the sedan makers (Zap, Miles Automotive, etc.) and economy cars (Riva, Think). Some will make cars for different categories. Established companies like Nissan, of course, are tinkering at this too.

Right now, Tesla and Think are the furthest along among the new companies in their production plans and are the best funded. Both are trying to release cars this year. Who knows what will happen with these other, smaller companies. If the early 20th century car industry is any indication, most of them will die, but a few may become successes. The one thing that many have going for them is that they are buying their batteries, perhaps the most difficult challenge in electric cars, from third-party suppliers.

Motorcycles from Zero Motorcycles and Vectrix are already out there. Not only are cycles cheaper to make, there's less crash testing. (The government assumes you will biff anyway, so why bog down marketing?)

Lightning will buy its batteries from Altair Nanotechnologies, which makes a lithium-titanate battery. Altair also sells batteries to Phoenix Motorcars, makers of an all-electric SUV. Phoenix recently ...

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