Are you worried about the environment? Have you considered buying an electric car in desperate attempt to stop global warming's inexorable destruction of the planet?
Well, if you have, we have some news which might annoy you.
As it turns out, electric cars do far more environmental damage than their petrol and diesel equivalents, a new report from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology has found.
The researchers found that electric car factories emitted more toxic waste than traditional car factories, and that producing an electric car potentially creates twice as much global warming as producing a liquid-fuelled car.
And on top of this, manufacturing the batteries for modern electric cars requires a great deal of toxic minerals including copper, aluminium and nickel.
"Ah," I hear you say, "but once electric cars have rolled off the production line, they emit far less CO2 than their petrol-fuelled equivalents."
Not so, it seems. While it is true that electric cars produce zero tailpipe emissions, they have to get their electricity from somewhere, and, in the UK at least, this probably means burning either gas or coal.
Professor Anders Hammer Stromman, the co-author of the report, claims: "It is counterproductive to promote electric vehicles in regions where electricity is primarily produced from lignite, coal or even heavy oil combustion."
The only way in which electric cars could provide an environmental advantage to liquid-fuelled cars is in areas of the world where sustainable and non-polluting methods account for the majority of energy production.
Now, we don't want to be seen to be putting electric cars down; we agree that the future of the horseless carriage is indeed electric. However, what we've suspected for a long time, and which is confirmed by this report, is that the electric cars of today are doing more harm than good.
So, if you really want to save the environment, our advice is to buy a fuel-efficient second-hand car. Or a bicycle.
