Electric Cars

I just had a thought, reading over another electric car story, like I do.

Is it possible we've gone about this the wrong way? Europe is a proven market for small cars that don't need to really travel over hugely long distances. I can't imagine a per-charge range of 200 km would be that big a detriment if you're only driving from one end of Paris to the other end of Paris. Most European cities are filled with cars that make Americans gasp and as I understand it, those cars are only really meant for inner city travel. Of course the fact that a lot of these cities have good rail service makes the whole car thing questionable, but we'll leave that for the moment because some people must have cars. One could argue that you could hardly take the car out of the city, thus negating its usefulness. I suppose I would need to know more about the actual driving habits of Europeans to be able to judge.

America is way too spread out for the electric cars I've seen. In Michigan, unless you live in a few specific places, almost everything requires a car ride. It's two miles to the nearest grocery store for us, and we don't even have sidewalks for most of that. You could expect to be in the car for 1 to 4 hours just driving to and from work everyday. Two hours there and two hours back is a lot, but it's not unheard of and isn't really that excessive. Even if we had a better rail system, I’m not sure it would help all that much. We would probably still have to drive a lot because things are really far away and Americans have been trained to be lazy over the last 50 years.

Either that, or maybe the electric car really isn't ready for prime time. I'm not sure.