London Mayor Boris Johnson: “Make Way for the Mitsubishi Outlander!”

High-ranking Brit goes to Tokyo; electric boogaloo ensues.
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Please be upstanding for Boris Johnson: progressive urban-transportation enthusiast and—our man in Westminster tells us—Mayor of London.

Johnson was in Tokyo recently for a test drive of Mitsubishi’s Outlander PHEV (plug-in hybrid vehicle), and with apologies to Jerry Seinfeld and his coterie of coffee-quaffing comics, Boris gives better camera.

“There’s a faint sort of whine, like a self-satisfied cat,” the phlegmatic mayor says as he coaxes the dual-motor, gas-engine SUV through clusters of paps. Breeze catching his unruly pageboy mop (Johnson is a window-down, elbow-out guy), the mayor opines on the lack of market uptake with EVs, calling range anxiety a red herring.

“I think it’s purely psychological,” he says. “[People] don’t realize that it’s going to be a piece of cake.”

Everything seems a piece of cake with Boris behind the wheel. That is, until he takes both hands off of it.

Join a good bloke, won’t you?

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Deputy Editor. Previously held editorial positions at BBC.com and the New York Times. Brakes for whoopie pies.

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