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With all due respect: cars in Europe aren't "small" by any standard. The truth is that the average American car is incredibly and absurdly huge. What does a single person (or anybody, really) need a giant pick-up truck for?

Powering those electric cars is the elephant in the room.

Somehow the thought of a GM SUV with the word Electric stuck on the back of it doesn't make me think the world is getting saved. Obviously that's what'll happen and that's the point of the question.

If NPR doesn't ask the automaker the hard questions then who will?

PS fact check -- the car is Renault-Nissan, not Renault -- according to the Time magazine article this wk you piggybacked your segment on.

i hope this works, I always felt that israel has the creativity (and motivation) to come up with alternatives to oil

The rough estimate of equivalence is that 50 electric cars = 1 gas powered vehicle. And for those who are wedded to large automobiles, they too can be fitted with electric motors; yes you can convert that Hummer to electric.
So the key question is how the electricity is generated.

My Brother is a mechanic that works on Hybrids.
He says that other mechanics he knows have been converting their hybrids into electric cars. He says that they have been able to get them to go 200 miles using the current batteries in the Prius hybrids.

My point is that the technology has been there all along. The concerns you brought up regarding the Israeli car are information obstacles, not real obstacles to getting a "green' car into the mass population.

Also, look up The "Rodin Coil"...
a breakthrough in the efficiency of electric coils that would make dependency on oil obsolete.

YES WHERE DO THEY GET THE ELECTRICITY???

From where does Israel get their electricity? Nuclear, Coal, ?

There have been significant improvements in battery technolgy; 200 mile capacity is now common. Check these sites out, you will be amazed http://www.teslamotors.com/ and www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOl_1S10jTk .
and the tesla people are ploughing the profits into producing a 4 seater sedan.

By the way, have you seen "Who Killed the Electric Car?" WOrth a view.

The myth of Electric cars being impractical is just that - a myth. If you haven't seen it already, watch "Who Killed The Electric Car".

M.

Is there an effort to measure the amount of fossil fuels needed to produce each virtual gallon (or however units of car energy will be measured in the short term!) -- i.e., the so called carbon footprint of each virtual gallon?

As I understand, electric cars (along with biofuels, etc.) are not environmentally friendlier than gas-burning cars unless they also focus on the minimizing or eliminating the amount of carbon released.

I fear that consumers, with the help of marketers, will confuse electric with enviro friendly -- when in fact the only distinction there is the amount of space between the smokestack and driver's nose.