Is the Nissan Leaf a new beginning for the automobile or a false dawn? Motoring Editor Nigel Burton considers the evidence.

THE remarkable thing about Nissan's Leaf is its sheer ordinariness. Anyone can jump in, press the engine start, smile at the little welcome jingle, move the mouselike gear selector into the drive position and go.

There's no fuss, no drama (unless you're particularly fond of jingles) and no learning curve. The Leaf looks, and feels, like any other low-profile medium-sized Japanese hatchback. It's almost boring.

Which is pretty incredible when you realise that the Leaf is possibly the most radical car built for mass production since inventors Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach finished their first automobile in 1889.

In the early days of car design, electricity, along with steam, was a viable alternative to gasoline.

Electric vehicles had several advantages. They were silent, vibration-free and required no gear changing.

Steam cars required no gear changes, either, but their engines had to be fired up and left to build up steam -atedious process that sometimes took as long as an hour on chilly mornings.

Steam car drivers needed patience and planning if they were to get to work on time.

By 1899, electric cars were outselling every other kind of vehicle.

Sales peaked in 1912, but, by then, electric vehicles had become a victim of their own success.

Increasing numbers of cars prompted governments to build roads connecting towns and cities. Suddenly, an electric vehicle, with its limited range of only a dozen miles or so, did not look so hot against petrol cars capable of running all day provided there was gas in the tank.

Fast forward 100 years and electric vehicles are back and the Sunderland-built Leaf is in the vanguard.

Nissan followed mobile phone practice, flattening and squeezing the battery pack to accommodate the Leaf's shape. The cells are hidden beneath the floor for better handling and balance.

The Leaf is no sports car, and its suspension is rather soft, but it feels agile and confident beyond the urban sprawl.

Inside, it is a spacious fiveseat hatchback with room for mum, dad and three children, plus all their clutter. The boot's big enough for a couple of hefty suitcases, too.

Nissan claims the 24kWh battery pack is good for about 100 miles but, out in the real world where it gets cold and you sometimes have to get to places quickly, I'd suggest the actual range sits somewhere between 60 and 80 miles before you need to find a plug-in point.

There's even an iPhone app that allows you to turn on your Leaf remotely, so you can instruct the heater to warm up the cabin on freezing cold mornings before you have left the house.

Nissan reckons the electric vehicle is here to stay. Sister company Renault will have six on sale very soon. But will they ever replace fossil fuels?

Current technology means even the best electric vehicle cannot match a petrol car. A gallon of petrol can release an immense amount of energy - not surprising because it has been stewing beneath the earth for millions of years - and it is highly unlikely batteries will ever catch up.

Maybe part of the answer lies in car sharing: owning an electric vehicle for in-town and sharing a traditional car for occasional family trips, such as holidays, once or twice a year.

Or perhaps the longer term solution is the hydrogen fuel cell -agenuinely green technology, but one still fraught with production and distribution problems. Honda certainly thinks so. It is sinking serious money into fuel cell research at the moment.

What is certain is that the Nissan Leaf has kick-started a new beginning for the automobile.

One hundred years after the peak of their success, the electric vehicle is well and truly back.

Review: June 6, 2011