See the 'heart attack' price announcement on the iMiev in Japan HERE

Drive across the Sydney Harbour Bridge in Mitsubishi's plug-in i MiEV, and you get more recognition from ordinary people than the bloke in the shiny new Lambo.

Against red-blooded car criteria the i MiEV is as emotionally engaging as a toaster. But a lot of people don't see things that way any more. Many regard the i MiEV as a tangible solution. Visually, it trumps even the Prius on the envirometer.

Mitsubishi Motors Australia is gagging for the moral high ground it represents.

But the i MiEV is not for everyone. With a range of 140-160km between seven-hour recharges, it's suitable ‘only' for 98 per cent of Australia's daily driving. CO2 from coal-fired electricity is ‘just' half that of petrol, kay-for-kay. And smog? You don't make any. Running cost is substantially lower, too, though this is not likely to offset the vehicle's substantial cost (see below). Speed? It's limited to ‘just' 130km/h.

The i MiEV is a quiet achiever. With double the torque of the equivalent petrol i-Car (180Nm versus 94Nm) it's lively off the mark, though this fails to compute initially thanks to the encompassing silence and seamlessness. The extra torque more than offsets the net 180kg weight gain in the conversion to battery power.

Peak torque is, in fact, limited by electronics. As with all electric cars, you get peak torque off the mark, at zero rpm. The 180Nm peak is maintained to about 2000rpm, beyond which it drops, but remains above the torque produced by the 660cc turbocharged four in the petrol car.

Driving? Dead easy. Start-up uses a conventional ignition key, although rather than coughing into life it simply chimes when good to go. Select ‘D' and it creeps forward, just like a regular auto. Select ‘E' and torque production is further constrained to maximise range. Final setting is ‘B', which increases the regenerative braking on a trailing throttle. (In time we'll doubtless need a name other than ‘throttle'. Electric motors don't have them. Rheostat, perhaps. Or ‘go pedal'...)

Production begins in Japan later this year, but price is the real hurdle. Like all new technology, volumes will be low and price high. The smart money says around 4 million Yen ($56,000) not including Japanese government kickbacks of up to 1 million Yen ($14,000), so you'd have to figure the mid-$60k ballpark by the time it lands here. Call it a Prius-and-a-half.

Mitsubishi Motors Australia CEO Robert McEniry has said, repeatedly, that direct government funding via subsidy will be essential for EVs to be commercially viable.

This makes me wonder about everyone who noticed the i MiEV driving across the Bridge, and incorrectly assumed it was an out-of-the-box solution to our immediate environmental or oil-dependency problems. What a nice idea: Buy this and the problem goes away. But as well as it is executed, and for a first-generation example the i MiEV really is excellent, it's no kind of silver bullet.

Let's say the price here is $65k, and in the interests of fairness Senator Kim Carr kicks the tin to the tune of $70 million (after all, it's the same total Government funding as the Hybrid Camry received). Let's say the subsidy is $17,500 per i MiEV, which is half the $35k EV price premium above a small petrol car. Let's assume 2000 units are sold annually, and we repeat the subsidy every year for three years.

Funding? A 0.4-cent-per-litre ‘EV excise' on fuel would more than fund the subsidy.

Where would we be when 2012 bows out? Senator Carr's door and carpet would be worn out, a consequence of every car company with a purported environmental edge begging for a piece of the action. We'd have 6000 EVs on Australian roads. Mainly i MiEVs, but also a smattering of smarts and Volts, perhaps. Plus about 11-point-something million conventional passenger cars. (That's a nose-to-tail conga line of cars stretching from Sydney to Perth - 10 lanes wide.) One passenger vehicle in every 2000 or so would be an EV.

We'd cut passenger-car CO2 emissions by five parts in 10,000 in 2012. That's five ten-thousandths of seven per cent of Australia's total greenhouse emissions - a negligible amount.

We'd cut petrol consumption by nine million litres. Which sounds a lot, until you realise passenger cars in Australia suck in 18 billion litres of fuel annually. That's a box full of fuel as long and wide as a football field, stretching 1.8km into the sky. The saving is the bottom 90cm of the 1.8km-high trough. A comparative dribble...

Even if this scenario underestimates the uptake/availability of EVs in Australia by a factor of 10 (and it doesn't) EVs are not enough to make a tangible difference.

Alternatively, the Government could get really serious and spend less. I propose $20 million annually (the same as the advertising spend for a car company near the bottom of the top 10) funded by a 0.1 cent-per-litre ‘fuel economy excise' used to teach drivers how to drive more economically. A 5-10 per cent saving could be achieved easily - that's 2-4 million tonnes of CO2 and around 1-2 billion litres of fuel saved. A better deal for taxpayers, especially seeing as if you follow the advice you get your contribution back, times 100. Mitsubishi might not agree.

Car companies all see the solution to climate change and oil dependency within the paradigm of exciting new, green product. That's part of the problem, too.