Researchers in the fossil fuel industry are endeavouring to produce a new hydrocarbon superfuel which they maintain would lead to a 5% increased efficiency in car engines, resulting in a reduction of 1.8 million tonnes of CO2 emissions. They claim this would have a comparable effect to swapping one million new cars for battery operated ones. But while environmentalists are typically sceptical about such claims, electric cars are not yet a panacea. It is naïve to dismiss the scale of the challenges presented by the push to go electric as a mere lack of collective will. Demobilisation of the entire global fleet of some 1.3 billion vehicles would take 15 years according to industry analysts. And the infrastructure to support advanced battery technology would need to be scaled up far beyond current capabilities. And of course, one point that is often overlooked, the environmental gains would only be fully achieved if wind or solar generated electricity was used to power electric vehicles.