Let's get one thing out of the way - I'm not your typical rev-head. My mode of transport is the ladies' favourite, a Toyota Yaris. It's 11 years old, radioactive yellow and has Padre Pio stickers all over the windscreen from its previous owner (my mother).
I drive in five-inch heels - save the lecture please, Gay Byrne - and there's a cuddly toy buckled-up in the back seat.
To me, a Lamborghini is a cocktail, Diesel is a fashion label and Jordan is a glamour model and when something goes wrong I use such mechanically technical terms as "squeak", "squidgy" and "whirring" to describe the problem to a disdainful grease monkey.
In short: my car is embarrassing and I'm not sure what goes on under the bonnet, but it gets me from A to B, so I don't really care.
The environment, on the other hand, is something I do give a damn about so when I was invited to test-drive Nissan's new electric car I scoured the latest copy of the car buff's bible, Top Gear, hid the Glee CD on my passenger seat and vroomed off to the showroom.
Like lots of homes here in Ireland, we recycle our rubbish, grow our own veg and take solar-powered showers. So eventually trading that gas-guzzler for a more planet-friendly set of wheels seems the next logical step to shift our environmental efforts up a gear.
Battery cars have been viewed as something of a joke - a bit like driving to work astride on a Philips Ladyshave - and the humble milk float of 1960's Ireland was about the closest we got to putting a fully electric vehicle (as distinct from a hybrid) on our roads.
Now tree-huggers can look forward to a more fashionable form of carbon footprint-free travel when the first battery car goes on sale in Ireland (and elsewhere, of course) in 2011.
Earlier this week, a grant of €5000 was announced for those who snap up the country's first fleet of BEV's (battery-powered electric vehicles). Motorists who go green will also be exempt from paying vehicle registration tax but will it be enough to convince consumers jittery about driving something in the same plug-in category as a cellphone or hair-straighteners?
All week the airwaves have been crammed with callers with "range anxiety" - the fear that their battery car will conk out between Ballygobackwards and the Arsend-of-Nowhere with no juice point for miles.
In reality, the Electricity Supply Board has committed to providing 3500 charging points - 2000 domestic and 1500 kerbside - by the end of 2011, the first of which have already gone live in Dublin.
Every town with a population of 1500 has been promised at least one and all major routes will be dotted with rapid charges - which boost the battery in 20 minutes - at 60km intervals. The car is also fitted with a system that tells you when and where to charge up to avoid being left stranded.
Perhaps what we're all afraid to admit is that the idea of driving an electric car is, well, just a little bit naff but there's nothing uncool about the Nissan Leaf that I've taken for an exclusive spin.
'THIS IS A REAL CAR'
The sleek five-passenger hatchback was unveiled alongside the Renault Fluence at this week's grant announcement.
And, bearing no resemblance to Postman Pat's pedal van, it proves that battery cars aren't just for the muesli-crunching masses - superficially, at least.
Nissan's styling chief Shiro Nakamura said: "From the beginning, we didn't want to make the car very strange, because one of the perceptions of battery cars they're toys or cheap - but this is a real car."
Car connoisseurs may look at the pictures and call my bluff. And OK, the car I test-drove had the engine of a Nissan Leaf in a Versa sedan body - what engineers call a test mule, because bosses are petrified some careless hack will knock lumps out of their precious prototype.
Once the door clicks shut, however, the difference is unmistakable.
FAST, FLUID AND FEATHERLIKE
As hyped, the first thing you notice is the thing you don't notice - noise. Initially it's difficult to tell if it's on and even as you pick up speed it remains virtually inaudible, giving an almost eerie feeling of floating.
The drive itself is fast, fluid and feather-like, the steering and pedals responding instantly to the deftest touch. It's quick off the line and whether cruising along in drive, reversing or parking, there wasn't a single peep out of it.
In fact, you might want to double-check that it's switched off for fear those all-important electrons trickle away!
In place of a fuel gauge the car has a battery-life display on the fascia which should help relieve range stress but my 20 minutes behind the wheel barely budged the needle.
THE SCIENCE BIT
What it lacks in a tail-pipe, the car makes up for with plenty of other nifty features such as its EV-IT, a navigation system that allows the driver to remotely access, through their cellphone, the aircon system and to automatically set the car's battery to recharge.
The teeny gearshifter is more like a computer mouse than the lever I'm used to.
With a maximum speed of 145km/h and 79kW, you're unlikely to burn rubber but then that's not very good for the environment anyway. And while it's unlikely to set a boy racer's world on fire, it's no slouch either, going from 0-100km/h in about eight seconds.
Here's the science bit: the Leaf draws power from a 24kW-hour lithium-ion battery pack under its floor. It takes eight hours to fully charge and Nissan claims it can do around 160km without conking out. But, as with regular cars, your driving can dictate energy consumption - though in this case, braking regenerates the battery.
TOO QUIET
As the world's first mass-produced electric car though, it's not without its problems.
Safety officials fear it may actually be too quiet - and Nissan is reportedly even considering some kind of 'vroom vroom' sound-effect to prevent cyclists and pedestrians crossing its path (they'll have to take out their iPod earphones first).
Nonetheless, the revolutionary zero-emission motor heralds the dawn of the battery vehicle.
General Motors, Ford and Toyota are all working on their own and by 2020 it's guesstimated that 10 percent of all cars on our roads will be electric.
Just as we laughed at the first cellpones, it's possible that in more advanced times to come our children will look back on the Leaf as primitive.
For now, though, the experience is electrifying. - Irish Independent