I consider the Tesla as the benchmark for a current real-world application of the electric car. It is quite expensive, but new technology always is. Mercedes-Benz sells quite a few SL roadsters (5,000 in the US alone) every year in the same price range. There is however, one fundamental problem with this product that makes it seem less than viable to replace an SL or a 911 cabrio as a boulevard cruiser. The manufacturers claim of 200 miles between charges seems to be a bit of a stretch. U.S. automotive magazines such as Motor Trend and BBC's Top Gear television program have tested the Tesla for the performance and found the range to be much less. Fast depletion of battery power stores is a problem with any electric car. If this problem were taken care of then electric could be a pheasable thing to do with the car industry, it may be the best bet. But then the fossil fuel dependance is just shifted to electricity production and the power grid. A world full of millions of cars plugged-in every night surely must be just as bad if not worse than tail-pipe emissions. So, it seems battery development is really the place to look. And it just so happens there has been a bit of a break-through in battery tech recently at Stanford. The replacement of carbon anodes in conventional lithium-ion batteries for silicon nanowire anodes produces 10 times the power. http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2008/january9/nanowire-010908.html It seems to me that this has some indications for the auto industry. The Tesla Roadster literally uses laptop batteries, 6831 of them. The same carbon anode lithium-ion batteries are used in cell phones and iPods as well. They are all over the place, and this is a major improvement. Electric car motors are extremely simple, compact, light, and immensely powerful for their size. If the batteries were smaller and more powerful than we really would be getting somewhere. However, I don't know how this new battery translates into added miles out of a heavily loaded electric car motor or even if there are plans to use it this way. But there should be.