Go read the history of the
Go read the history of the electric car. Prior to about 1920, the electric car outsold gasoline cars in America. And we're running into the same situation now that happened then: "designed for the upper-class customers that made them popular. They featured luxurious interiors and were replete with expensive materials" - from Wikipedia.
It's also not like we haven't had batteries capable of lasting 8 hours on a charge at full speed operation for decades. Anyone who's ever driven an electric forklift knows that. The problem is that for the capacity needed to do so, those batteries weighed in at 4,000 pounds. Every time manufacturers have tried to come out with electric cars, it's been "too expensive compared to equivalent gasoline cars of the time".
Now - if ... and this is a big IF ... you can get a manufacturer who can make an electric car that can sell for $30,000 (WITHOUT subsidies) that gets 300 miles of range, I think you'd have a winner in this country. I'm not saying it's not possible - I mean, when you look at hybrid's today with regenerative braking, independent motors on each wheel (talk about a true all wheel drive) - there's a lot of things possible. But here's what's been the killer.
Is it cost effective to do so? The gasoline engine didn't kill the electric car in the 20's - the assembly line and the road infrastructure did. Our country is spread out. If ALL of your driving is in a metro area, then having a car with 100 miles of range is fine. But if you're in a LARGE metro area - Jacksonville, Dallas - Fort Worth, Los Angeles - you may end up driving 40 miles one way just to get to work each day. (This is also a subsidiary argument regarding mass transit and passenger rail - it works well when your population centers are close together, otherwise not so much.) It's 240 miles from Dallas to Houston - 240 miles from St. Louis to Indianapolis, 250 miles from St. Louis to Kansas City.