One thing that you have to get around is the price point … people will not pay as much for a car that can only take them to and from work as they will for a car that can do everything; never mind that they never do anything else. At the present all the eco friendly cars I have seen cost as much if not more than their regular counterparts. Take a Smartcar for example, it costs as much as any other sub compact car, but can only hold 2 people + 2 bags of groceries. Sure you get 50mpg instead of 40, but that alone isn’t really that big of a selling point.

And of course, the one thing everyone forgets with electric cars is that the electricity has to come from somewhere, and it won’t all be from windmills and solar panels. Any efficiencies you gain in the car are lost as soon as you have to transmit the electricity long distances, so as long as the generating plant is fossil fueled all you are doing is moving the problem.

Now, if they would let everyone deduct from their taxes the cost of putting solar on their roofs and let them all hook into the grid … then we would have enough local sourced “clean” power to run a lot of electric cars. We would also be mush better able to withstand terrorist attack or natural disaster that might affect the power grid.

In general, the green movement has to move away from guilt and fear and harness the human love of bright shiny toys. Sell environment friendly tech and *lifestyle* as cool, hip, convenient and cutting edge and people will want to buy it. And money talks. It’s already happening with hybrids, Transit Oriented Development and geothermal heating/cooling for residential housing.

( and the bit about the batteries not working well in cold weather is true BTW. )