Who killed the electric car?

We saw this movie a few days ago and it was quite interesting to hear about the whole electric car program in California. In the early 90's, California required that a few percent of vehicles sold has to be zero emissions vehicles, which essentially meant that they had to be electric cars. All of the motor companies were able to make and lease these cars to individuals, but were later taken back when California dropped the requirement of zero emission cars when it was determined that there wasn't a market for them.

Now, all of the research seems to be heading towards a hydrogen economy where we would eventually use fuel cell vehicles instead of our current vehicles. However, below is a chart that shows that this may not be nearly as efficient as using electric cars that are able to recharge into the electricity grid.


Source: Physorg.com

The actual article has some shortcomings, as mentioned by many comments on the story, that it only mentions a single way of generating hydrogen, which is through electrolysis. Regardless, the electric vehicle has a much higher efficiency rating compared to the hydrogen options.

In the movie, the problems that were stated with the electric car is that the batteries only would get you about 100 miles in a single charge at the time the auto maker cars were available. However, the battery technology has improved and at the end of the movie it stated that the batteries could last 300 miles and recharge in about an hour. For actual road trips, you could make a hybrid car that could have a small motor that either runs on gas or a fuel cell. And that solves your problem.

The only problem that needs to be solved is to force the automakers kicking and screaming to do it, like how they had to be dragged kicking and screaming to add seatbelts, airbags, increase mileage standards, etc. The other problem that needs to be added is to create tax breaks to allow these cars to be competitive with gas cars so that they are economically viable to the end consumer. However, that's asking quite a bit these days for the federal government to implement. Maybe California will change its mind.