Concept Twizy in 2009 and production Twizy today

Towards the end of 2009, zero-emission electric cars were little more than concept cars. At that year’s Frankfurt motor show Renault displayed four electric prototypes - the Fluence, Z.E sedan, the Kangoo Z.E van, the Twizy tandem two-seater and the ZOE subcompact… but that’s all they were: ideas. Electric cars were an utopian dream, something for the sci-fi magazines.

The Renault-Nissan Alliance has sold its 200,000th electric vehicle – by far more than all other major automakers combined. The milestone was reached earlier this month and comes four years after the launch of the Nissan LEAF, the world’s first mass-market electric vehicle. Nissan LEAF remains the best-selling electric vehicle in history.

To capture what the first 200,000 consumers love about their electric vehicles, the Alliance has launched a series of videos featuring EV owners on three continents. “I Made the Switch” tells why people bought their electric vehicles and how switching to a zero-emission vehicle has changed their lives.

Norway, rich in petroleum, is also a global leader in renewable energy use, at 98%, and cleaner, more inexpensive electricity is helping to drive the push of electric vehicles into the mainstream market.

Roughly one in six cars sold in Norway is an EV, a whopping 15% share.

If necessity is the mother of invention, engineers fuel that fire at Nissan's Technical Center in Stanfield, Arizona. Here engineers are plentiful. They love to build things, test things and tinker with things. This team thinks a lot about "why not?" Recently they created a one-of-a-kind electric vehicle to haul supplies and people around on the tech center property.

Do you live in America and have a great scheme that will boost the take up of electric vehicles? Then you could be in line for a grant of up to $4.5 million to help develop the idea.

The offer comes from the US Department of Energy which is looking for "highly innovative approaches to increase the acceptance and deployment of Alternative Fuel Vehicles (AFVs)."

Blue chip companies including Coca Cola, Cisco Systems and Google are helping to promote a switch to electric vehicles by providing EV charging stations at their offices and HQs.

An all-electric Renault Zoe has visited all four corners of the United Kingdom, covering a total of 2,500 miles (4,200 km), to prove that EV ‘range anxiety’ need no longer be an issue thanks to a three-fold increase in the number of rapid chargers in less than a year.

For the eighth consecutive year, innovation took centre stage in the competition supported by Renault, Dassault Systèmes and the French Ministry of Education.

Almost 9,000 students from schools around France took part in the 2014 edition of “Course en Cours” to race the mini sports cars that they designed, tested and built themselves using state-of-the-art technologies.