Batteries have also become smaller and lighter, benefitting the packaging, efficiency and handling of these vehicles. These days, most electric cars are capable of travelling more than 100 miles on a single charge – more than 300 miles in some cases – and their recharging time has tumbled.
In this list, we’ve ranked the best electric cars you can buy today. You can buy popular models like the Vauxhall Corsa and Peugeot 208 in electric form, as well as luxury and performance models like the Jaguar I-Pace and Porsche Taycan which would've been unthinkable only a few years ago. They range in size, too, with electric power now available in mainstream superminis to family-sized SUVs and performance saloons. There is an increasing number of electric cars entering the market every year, leading to more and more new car buyers swapping petrol and diesel pumps for a plug. Buyers fell out of love with them in favour of petrol and diesel cars, though, and the term ‘electric vehicle’ brought only images of golf buggies and milk floats to mind. After seeing too many fists slamming into too many faces for reasons only testosterone-charged delinquents find compelling, I’m calling time-out on the whole genre.Electric cars are still considered as a relatively new concept but they’ve actually been around since the 19th century. As well liked as they are by fans, the subplots involving them at times contribute more distracting static than narrative depth, while their back stories remain sketchy to non-fans, especially those who missed seeing Miike’s films.īut if you view all three in quick succession you may, like me, feel punked out. In contrast to Miike’s crazy brio, with wild punks charging each other like blue-painted warriors in “Braveheart,” Toyoda stages his fight scenes with marginally more realism, as well as a wearisome repetitiveness.Īlso, like so many commercial films based on long-running manga, “Crows Explode” crams in as many characters from the original as possible, such as the excitable Suzuran alumnus Ken Katagiri (Kyosuke Yabe) and the silent hooded giant Lindaman (Motoki Fukami). Much else has to transpire first, however, including a looming war with a rival school and its top fighter - the grotesquely scarred Hiroki Shibata (Takanori Iwata). The lone wolf is Kazeo Kaburagi (Masahiro Higashide), a tall, rangy third-year transfer student, who quickly establishes himself as a fearless fighter, though he is uninterested in the power struggles swirling around him.īut this wolf can’t remain in his lair forever and it soon becomes obvious that Kaburagi and Kagami are heading for a showdown. Golden-haired first-year student, Ryohei Kagami (Taichi Saotome) - with a gang boss dad, quick fists and bad attitude - is also a contender. Now that Suzuran’s previous primus inter pares, Genji Takiya (Shun Oguri) and Tamao Serizawa (Takayuki Yamada), have graduated, the top positions are open.Ĭompeting for them are the glowering Toru Gora (Yuya Yagira), the best fighter in the school, and the spiky-haired Tetsuji Takagi (Kenzo), ranked number two.
The story begins one month after the action of “Crows Zero II” ends. At the same time, the flamboyant artiness of Toyoda’s recent work, including the 2012 misfire “I’m Flash!,” has been replaced by grayer shades and grittier imagery. This will come as no surprise to fans of “Blue Spring” and other Toyoda films, with their real-world authenticity beneath the surreal stylistics. In contrast to Miike, who highlighted the absurdity of his characters’ macho posturing, Toyoda takes the manga-esque material relatively seriously and films the principals’ emotional eruptions relatively realistically. And once again the story revolves around the eternal battle to be Numero Uno, be it in the school, the neighborhood or the known punk world. Once again the setting is the all-boys Suzuran High, where the “Crows” - the self-chosen moniker for the student body - hang out and plot the destruction of their rivals. “Crows Explode” has much in common with the two previous films. Five years on comes the third installment in the series, “Crows Explode,” with a nearly entirely different cast and a new director, Toshiaki Toyoda, whose 2001 “Aoi Haru (Blue Spring)” helped birth the current spate of what might be called “school of punk” films.