A new lightweight hydrogen-powered car, capable of speeds up to 50mph, was shown off in London today.

Consumers could receive incentives of between £2,000 and £5,000 to buy an electric car from 2011, the Government announced today.

Anyone watching a late 1980s movie nowadays is reduced to giggles when they spot someone using a "mobile" phone the size of a cornflakes packet. Perhaps in 15 years' time we will look back at today's electric vehicles with the same bemused nostalgia. Mobile phones have come an astonishing distance in two decades and the same will happen with the electric car. Mainstream companies such as General Motors, Renault-Nissan and BMW are investing in it. It is the greenest way to get around – especially if the electricity is from renewables.

Hiroshi Shimizo, a professor at Keio University in Japan, talks about the Eliica, an electric car powered by lithium ion batteries he has developed which has greater acceleration than a Porsche 911.

There was a time when choosing to buy a green car simply meant deciding on a automobile that was available in a particular paint colour: a humble lime Mini, perhaps, or a Jaguar decked out in traditional British racing green. But we now live in an age when a documentary about global warming can win an Oscar and the question of carbon footprints is increasingly one of the most important things a car buyer can consider.

It looks as stylish as a Lotus, can outpace a Porsche 911 and is coveted by Hollywood A-listers such as Brad Pitt and George Clooney. But unlike the average super car, the Tesla Roadster is electric.

The fearsome roar of their engines is one of the first things to come to mind at the mention of Lotus, the stylish, lightweight British sports cars.

Two-thirds of cabinet ministers still travel in vehicles occupying the top emissions bands, despite targets to slash the carbon pumped out by official limousines.