Daniel #1: The reasons electric cars haven’t taken off on small island locations are simple: availability of parts and service. It is also expensive to ship vehicles, so the cost would go up for vehicles and parts as well. It obviously would make sense for electric vehicles to be used, but until someone can provide reliable parts and service, the status quo will be the status quo.

Don: This came up in my dinner meeting with Bob Lutz. The fact of the matter is that if that really is important, fake exhaust note can be piped in to the car. We all chuckled that it is an easy feature to add to an electric car — and interesting. You want V12 Ferrari? Air-cooled Porsche? F1 engine? Ford 302 with H-pipe? There could even be a huge aftermarket source for sampled sounds.

If this seems far-fetched, remember that Porsche spent unfathomable sums making the 996-series 911’s water-cooled engine sound air-cooled!

Jimmy: Electric car image is low because the current offerings are nothing an enthusiast would love. Bob brought up the Tesla roadster, and certainly any enthusiast would love one of these — provided that they can afford the hugh asking price. There are huge downsides to Tesla, though. The first is the complete lack of service, unless you live in California. Imagine having to truck your car to CA (at your expense) anytime your car needs fixing. Furthermore, when I first was made aware of the Tesla (a couple years ago, by none-other than Danny), I noted that based on the company’s own tech sheets, the battery packs would only last roughly 18 months of regular driving! This is a huge issue!!!

Tesla might also have some issues continuing with production of its future cars, because it is in a nice legal food fight with Fisker.

Pidgit: I sat next to GM’s Communications head for the EV-1 during dinner. If you believe that the EV-1 was killed because of Big Oil, then you probably believe that Jim Morrison and Elvis are alive. In all seriousness, the EV-1 was a test of concept. It proved what it needed to prove, which was that the market for electric cars was extremely small in a world with cheap fuel. It also showed that electric cars required a dealer service network and electric-charging infrastructure that didn’t exist at the time.

Big oil was too busy trying to influence foreign policy to increase the price of oil to get involved with little things like niche-market electric cars!

$4000 to fix my RAV4 LAST YEAR. Just today, it’s failing AGAIN… 2 months after my transmission’s warranty ran out. I still don’t know what to do.

Part of it will likely be making a sign that says “My New Toyota Transmission DIED AGAIN…Toyota is NOT helping” and placing it on my side windows and then park my car in front of Toyota dealerships.

General Motors’ EV-1 in the mid 90’s was supposed to be the new next beginning of the electric car age, and would have been if it weren’t for the oil industry that quickly squashed it and got GM and California to do away with it before it really ever had a chance.

The new GM Chevy Volt, or something similar is on it’s way, and with the ridiculous and rising cost of gasoline, the Volt should be a big thing. Unfortunately, it is still in the prototype phase.

As far as an average 40 mile charge limit, a good switching system from drained batteries to backup batteries, which would get smaller in future designs, could solve that problem. Let’s all hope.

I think your uncle’s arguments are good but most people just don’t think like that. Americans buy things with more capacity/capability/etc.than they will need 95% of the time because they fear the inconvenience caused by that other 5%. It’s also fashionable to do so, as evidenced by the trend towards stainless steel, industrial-quality appliances, for example, or by the fascination with Sam’s Club.

A real pity as perhaps rental services for pickup trucks and utility vehicles could become a niche market with lower prices to serve drivers of small, compact, efficient cars (electric or not).

Electric cars have an easy market: parents of teen drivers. Parents don’t want their kids going all over the place and with a 40-mile daily limit, they are essentially tethered close to home. Electric cars could be the new no-contract phone in terms of teen-friendliness.

Saturns from four or five years ago are at best mediocre.

You might look towards a Mazda6 (or maybe a Mazda3, but I find those too darn small) and see what falls into the price range.