Searching for the spirit of EVenture - is there room to roam with battery power?

Tom "Wookie" Ford is a man who has been known to embark on an adventure or two.

The journalist and TV presenter is famous for venturing off-piste, whether it's taking a Volvo on a search for Bigfoot in the Californian backwoods or driving up an erupting volcano in a Fiat Panda.

When we heard that he was fronting a new TV show all about electric vehicles it got us wondering how a man who revels in being far from the madding crowd would cope with the range concerns associated with battery powered vehicles. So we asked him and here, in his own words, Tom explains the thinking behind the show and discusses just how adventurous you can really be in an EV:

"Most people seem to think electric cars are a bit boring. Highly motivated golf buggies endlessly harped on about by people that only see them through the self-satisfied lens of their lack of local emissions, silence and perceived environmental benefit. The kind of people that abhor disposable nappies, but take five foreign holidays a year. But neither of these things are particularly true. Yes, there are some weird-beard EV fetishists that berate everyone for not immediately embracing the EV revolution while punting around in an £80k Tesla, but there are also thousands who quietly make the most of gently commuting in an EV hatchback - they just don’t shout as loud. Equally, there are quite a few electric vehicles out there that are very much focussed on the more thrilling side of what electric motivation can provide. And some are especially mighty.

Hence the new show. It’s called Hard Cell - and it’s about what happens when you embrace electricity for the performance benefit rather than the environmental goodness. Yes, the fact that you could charge these things up direct from renewable energy sources isn’t lost, but this is more about seeing if electric vehicles can stack up when things get serious. And by serious, I mean 600bhp electric RallyCross Ford Fiestas, an off-road race truck that’s been designed to race in some of the harshest environments on earth in a series called Extreme E, 1900bhp, multi-million pounds hypercars, electric Porsches, spike-tyred ice-racers and all sorts of other stuff. There’s also a resolutely petrol-powered Lamborghini Aventador SV Roadster in there as well for… um… ‘context’.