The Volkswagen Golf GTE is a hot hatch Greenpeace can get excited about

BOFFINS in a bunker deep beneath Volkswagen’s headquarters have mooned at the laws of logic with their latest model. Somehow, they’ve managed to serve roast beef and sushi on the same plate, and in a way that’s weirdly appetising.

Translated into layman’s English, the German car giant’s latest model manages to combine what should be two diametrically opposed strands of motoring. Hot hatches are feisty, fun and powerful, and eco-friendly hybrids emphatically aren’t.

The two might be about as easy to blend as oil and water, but that hasn’t stopped Europe’s biggest car maker from having a crack anyway.

To be fair, the idea of a hybrid that’s fun to drive isn’t exactly unprecedented. Anyone who owns a Honda CR-Z already knows that it’s entirely possible to drop a Captain Planet-pleasing powerplant which runs largely on lettuce and mineral water into a car that’s eager and exciting to hoof about in.

It’s just a shame that – for all the MUGEN-branded tuned up versions knocking around – Honda never came good on the CR-Z’s sports car potential. No matter how well it handles, the range-topping GT version has just 122bhp. Perhaps it’s just perceived wisdom that you can’t make a car please the hot hatch brigade and appease Greenpeace at the same time.

Or it at least will be until VW’s new hot hatch arrives.

It’s a simple idea – forty years ago VW popularised the hot hatch with the Golf GTI, and in 2009 it managed to translate the idea into coherent diesel by introducing the torque-tastic GTD. Now it’s swapped the last letter again to create a plug-in hybrid version of Germany’s favourite pocket rocket – yes, it’s the Golf GTE!

The E, in case, you hadn’t already worked it out, stands for Electric, because this particular Golf ditches the GTI’s big engine in favour of a small one and some electric motors to develop the same sort of power. Add the two together and you’ve got the equivalent of 204bhp.What’s more, when you aren’t driving like a speed-addicted yoof you can do 31 miles on electricity alone, saving the polar bears as you glide silently along.

More importantly, the GTE proves the future is arriving quicker these days. When Mercedes introduced the airbag on the S-Class we had to wait 15 years for it to reach family hatchbacks. The GTE’s premise of a performance car aided by electricity is exactly the same as the trick the McLaren P1 and the Porsche 918 make their shtick, and yet you can get it in affordable Golf form at the end of the year.

Who said saving the planet couldn’t be fun?

Are electric car grants a good use of taxpayers' money?

MILLIONS of pounds worth of Government grants for eco-friendly electric cars are being used by just a handful of affluent motorists to help them buy second cars.

That's the warning today from the House of Commons Transport Committee, who said that despite Westminster offering £11m worth of grants for those who buy plug-in vehicles, only “a handful” of motorists had taken the plunge, with many of those being richer buyers who are using them as second cars for shopping trips.

Liverpool Riverside MP Louise Ellman, who chairs the committee, said: “The Government must do more to show that its plug-in vehicle strategy is a good use of public money. Carbon emissions from transport must be reduced if the UK is to meet its climate change targets, but public money must be targeted on effective policies.

"So far, Department for Transport expenditure on plug-in cars – some £11 million – has benefited just a handful of motorists. We were warned of the risk that the Government is subsidising second cars for affluent households; currently plug-in cars are mostly being purchased as second cars for town driving. It is also unclear whether the provision of public charging infrastructure encourages demand for plug-in cars. Indeed, the Government does not even have a register of all the chargepoints installed at public expense."

An increasing number of manufacturers have launched both purely electric vehicles, such as Nissan's LEAF and Citroen's C-Zero, and plug-in hybrids, like Vauxhall's Ampera and Chevrolet's Volt.

The committee added that more investigation is required into the Government grants, to ensure they are a good use of public funds.

Have you bought an electric car? Get in touch by sending an email to david.simister@hotmail.co.uk or leave a comment below.

Fire up the... Vauxhall Ampera

THIS eco-warrior has an electric motor. It also packs a good old fashioned petrol engine. So the new Ampera's a hybrid, right?

Not quite, Vauxhall reckon. I'll apologise for getting so blatantly and boringly technical this soon into a review but it's important you know why the Ampera, this year's European Car of the Year, does what it does. A hybrid like, say, a Toyota Prius or a Honda Insight, is powered by a petrol engine which uses electric energy to help it run more efficiently.

The Vauxhall's contender (and its sister car, the Chevrolet Volt) is one you'll appreciate if you're a train buff - it's an electric vehicle which uses a petrol engine not to power its wheels, but to recharge its batteries. It is, in trainspotter speak, a petrol-electric. Not nodded off yet, then?

The upshot of all that electric wizardry is that the Ampera can do something no other electric car can. It can run on amps alone for 35 miles - more, Vauxhall reckons, than most of us regularly commute - so you can happily pop to the shops in it during the week not burning any fuel at all, plug it into the mains when you get back and sit back, smiling smugly because you're helping to mend the holes in the ozone layer. The clever bit, though, is that once you get past that it'll call on Esso's finest to keep going, meaning the 1.4 litre engine normally sat on the sub's bench is able to get you to Aunt Mabel's house in Aberdeen just like any other car could. Try doing that in your Nissan LEAF.

Normally, it's the price that unravels it all but while at £30,000 the Ampera costs about the same as the high end versions of Vauxhall's own Insignia it's the same sort of car - a big, generously equipped saloon, even if it's got a dashboard straight out of the 1980s. It's even nice to drive in a comfy, cosseting sort of way, with plenty of room upfront and in the back.

The Ampera isn't an electric car in the truest sense of the word but instead manages to be something much better; an eco-friendly express that makes sense. It's an environmentalist statement disguised as a really good car.