Battery power is still said to be the coming thing, although not just yet. Critical mass for electric cars may be less than five years away, say some experts, when economies of scale will make the product cheap enough to stand on its own feet without government subsidy.
Others say that by cutting weight out of vehicles and adding so-called range-extenders, viable electric cars will soon be a success, even though they may look more like frogs on steroids than normal cars.
In Europe and perhaps in America too, another looming obstacle to electric cars — on top of the fact that they are probably twice as expensive as they should be with half the needed range — is the fear that government regulation to clean up electricity generation and close down dirty coal-fired power stations may cut supply to dangerous levels just when the public will be seeking to plug in their new electric cars to the national grid.
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