DETROIT: With a curiously squashed, elongated body, the Tango electrically-powered car is as narrow as a single passenger and as nippy as a motorbike. Billed as the world’s fastest urban car, it can reach a speed of 200kmph.

Satisfied customers include the actor George Clooney, and its inventor describes the bizarre vehicle as a “chick magnet”.

Built by a US start-up called Commuter Cars, the Tango takes up only half a traffic lane. It can carry two people tandem-style in slightly cramped comfort. Without the need for gears, its battery-powered engine can accelerate from zero to 100kmph in four seconds and, with a racing car-style roll cage design, the Tango is supposedly as robust as a Volvo estate car. “It’s unequivocally the fastest car you can buy for an urban environment,” said Commuter Cars’ president Rick Woodbury, who has sold 11 of the vehicles so far, at a hefty price of $150,000 each. “I drove through Times Square and had girls throwing their arms around me.”

The Tango is among the quirkier exhibits on Electric Avenue, a corner of the Detroit motor show devoted to electrically-powered vehicles. Visitors this week included speaker of the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, and the governor of Michigan, Jennifer Granholm. Every manufacturer of any note, from General Motors to Toyota, Mitsubishi and Hyundai, has a plug-in car or, at the

very least, a petrol-electric hybrid on display, usually involving

the letter “e”, as in the BMW

ActiveE prototype and the Audi e-tron sports car.

The future of motoring, according to political and environmental enthusiasts, is electric. But this mantra has been repeated, in different forms, for almost a decade and many industry experts feel that it is hard to find a true groundswell of enthusiasm among consumers. PricewaterCooperhouse auto institute expects to see a small rise to four per cent by 2015. “What’s holding them back?” asks Anthony Pratt, a PricewaterhouseCoopers analyst. “Cost.” Typically, buying an environmentally friendly car involves a price premium and the recession has not helped.

Toyota this week showcased a smaller, cheaper version of the Prius called the FT-CH concept. Its Japanese rival, Nissan, displayed a pure electric plug-in car called the Leaf, which is already on the market in Japan and will hit US showrooms this year. It has a socket in its bonnet and needs to be recharged every 160kms. At a turbo-powered quick charging station, re-energising the batteries takes 26 minutes; a home charging station will take eight hours.

Mitsubishi has a similar model, the MiEV prototype (short for Mitsubishi Innovative Electric Vehicle). With their relatively short range, these vehicles are aimed at commuters and are suitable for commercial use in towns — by, for example, postal services and restaurants delivering food. But until somebody builds a network of electric charging stations, they are awkward for longer trips.