4 April 2011 Last updated at 05:04 ET

Cornwall Council to buy electric cars

Cornwall Council says its electric car scheme will go ahead

Cornwall Council says it is pressing ahead with plans to convert its fleet of vehicles to battery power.

Last year the council launched a Green Cornwall project which included installing several recharging points along the A30.

The council has admitted it will take longer than planned as there are only a handful of recharging points ready.

The estimated running cost of an electric vehicle is £200 for 10,000 miles of driving - about 2p per mile.

The comparable cost for a traditional car is between £1,000 and £1,500 per 10,000 miles.

The initial price of an electric car is about £25,000.

Cornwall Council's corporate director for the environment, Tom Flanagan, said: "In the next batch of vehicles we get, 25% of those will be electric.

"We're going to evaluate the use and then move it up to 25% and so we're taking a good proportion of the fleet as low carbon vehicles."