A couple of months ago, I posted an entry on some well-documented information regarding electric car technology. The info came from the web site of a new documentary called Who Killed the Electric Car? For most areas this movie has come and gone, so I’m watching for a DVD release soon.
I think we are at the beginning of a trend toward electric car technology. Gas-electric hybrids barely scratch the surface of what we will see very soon from automobile manufacturers. Tesla Motor’s upcoming release of the Tesla Roadster is more evidence that electric cars are in our forseeable future.
The Roadster is 100% electric, goes 250 miles on one charge, and can reach 60 MPH in only 4 seconds. This particular car is out of reach for normal people who don’t grow money on trees ($100K), but it is a sign of things to come. See what 1 cent per mile looks like at the Tesla Motors web site.
Curious Heretic 
Here’s my thing with electric cars… you still need fossil fuels to make the electricity!
Yes, sources in the USA for generating electricity include coal (51%), but also hydro, nuclear, solar, petroleum, and natural gas. Power generation plants, even coal burning ones, are more efficient and less polluting than vehicles. Consider which pollution source is easier to control: fumes from over 235,000,000 vehicles or fumes from 16,000 power plants? The problem of power plant pollution is much easier to handle. Yes, one power plant is bigger than one vehicle, but pollution is easier to control because they are so relatively few in number. So it relates to the “economy of scale”.
But also consider that electric cars are more efficient, so driving the same distance in a gasoline car produces far more pollution.
More info on this topic is at http://www.teslamotors.com/learn_more/