Pumped up over gas Signal of change First-class male

THE United States’ International Auto Show in Detroit is the best opportunity the motor trade has to talk to itself. For the first time ever the industry seems to be agreed that car makers will soon be producing commercially viable electric vehicles.

Once again Mr Bin Laden and his terrorists may have achieved an unintended consequence as the US is determined to wean itself off imported oil dependency.

Fuel cell technology has been available for many years but it has always proved too expensive to be a serious rival for oil-burning engines.

The US government is changing the regulations to help fuel cell technology and all the big US car manufacturers are accelerating their development programmes.

GM showed its new fuel cell vehicle, called Autonomy, to wide acclaim.

The charm of fuel cell energy is that it burns hydrogen and its only by-product is water vapour. This does not token the end of the oil industry as oil has diverse uses beyond petrol for car engines but the long mirage of fuel cell-powered vehicles suddenly looks like a business reality.

Electric cars have been around for more than a century but their range and performance has been feeble.

Their only success seems to have been milk floats where their silence was the bonus rather than their running costs.

Where the US leads others must surely follow. If GM, Ford and Chrysler can abandon internal combustion engines then other manufacturers can hardly fail to follow.

THE Prime Minister continues to use his huge powers of patronage to appoint Barry Cox as chairman of the new digital television supervisory body.

Mr Cox’s brief is to cajole or bribe us into abandoning our conventional television sets before the decade is out.

The Government wants to switch off all analogue television signals between 2006 and 2010.

Only 40 per cent of British homes have digital television. Mr Cox can expect a peerage once that figure has topped 95 per cent.

Perhaps the campaign will receive a technical boost. Pace, the set-top box manufacturer, is developing an adapter which will allow ordinary television sets to receive digital signals without the need of a monthly subscription. If this adapter is priced beneath 100 it must change the texture of the market.

ALLAN LEIGHTON, who has a portfolio of some of the best directorships in the UK, was appointed chairman of Consignia, better known to us all as the Post Office.

His brief is to close down 8000 of Britain’s 17,000 post offices and to prepare this gigantic company for the likely loss of its lesser monopoly once Postcomm, the regulator, recommends the opening up of the letters market.

The greatest challenge Mr Leighton has to counter is the Government’s plan to pay benefits and pensions directly into citizens’ bank accounts rather than degrade everyone in queues at post offices.

Mr Leighton’s past experience as chief executive of Asda had him at the top of a pyramid that was coherent. How different his perspective must be from the apex of the post office.