Right now, an alignment of historic environmental, economic, political and social forces are giving the electric vehicle (EV) the best chance it has had since the earliest days of the automobile.
Triple-digit oil prices have gone away, for now, but they are a recent memory and will be back. The failure of Copenhagen and the US Senate aside, carbon dioxide regulation of some kind is inevitable, and in the meantime, in the USA new corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards of 35.5 mpg by 2016 have clearly signalled to automakers that times are changing.
The BP Deepwater Horizon spill, which between 22 April and 19 July gushed some 100m. gallons of oil into sea, is one of the most visceral reminders in history of what damage petroleum can inflict on the planet.
We have come far enough that the mini EV boom of the 1990s is no longer a...