All of the technology described has been available for a long time but not flashy & sexy enough to appeal to Americans who got addicted to the power & glory of the Muscle Car & Macho Truck era. I know several people who drive electric cars to work every day, but not on energy wasting, over crowded expressways. That, you see, is illegal.

The biggest obstacle to having electric commuter cars right now are traffic laws that make it illegal to drive a vehicle around your town that is not capable of more than 30 miles per hour while posting signs that limit your speed to less than 30 miles per hour.

A conversion, where the gasoline engine has been removed and replaced by an electric motor and a dozen lead-acid batteries (so-called “gold cart” batteries) is cheaper to create than any of glamorous utopian cars being promised by varous manufacturers. It’s also capable of highway speeds for a short stretch, like a typical weekday commute and cost less over their lifetimes than any internal combustion vehicle.

Unfortunately, the conversion requires “hot rod” skills that most people don’t have or an enormous investment to cover liability issues.

The reason the ENVI is significant is that no other established American car maker has made or said they would make a highway-capable EV (electric vehicle) since the GM EV-1 of more than a dozen years ago, and that was a very different story since GM only made the EV-1 under vigorous protest, only leased it in California, never sold it and crushed all but a dozen or so as soon as they got California’s mandate overturned that forced them to offer one percent of their entire fleet as EVs.

The entire time they made them, GM was secretly sabotaging their own EV program because they knew they could make much more money selling fuel-powered cars that require regular tune-ups, smog tests, and other kinds of maintenance and replacement parts that EVs never need. Even the brake pads on EVs last much longer since the electric motors use the inertia of the moving vehicle to recharge the battery while decelerating.

Hybrids such as the Prius will only be attractive to car buyers for a few years until fast-charge batteries and charging stations become widely available, batteries such as the Altair NanoSafe that can be recharged in less than 10 minutes, can last the life of the car, and won’t explode or catch fire like lithium-ion batteries can. A battery from A123 Systems can be charged nearly as fast as the NanoSafe, will likely last for 10 years, and is cheaper, so there will be less expensive alternatives. Eestor, a Texas company, has a supercapacitor battery substitute that they claim may last even longer than batteries, give an even longer driving range between charges, and may cost perhaps only 10 percent as much as an equivalent battery.

As soon as high-speed stationary charging stations start to be installed, the market for hybrids will disappear since the onboard generator that makes an EV a hybrid only serves to increase the weight and decrease the efficiency of an EV. If such electric cars can drive cross-country with electricity at the equivalent cost of around 150 mpg. When drivers understand the economies of an EV compared to a hybrid and there are enough charging stations available, no one will want hybrids any more and owners that do have hybrids will rip out the generators and replace them with extra batteries to increase their range.

Dodge’s announcement is likely to encourage Starbucks, Costco and other companies to install charging stations in their parking lots so that anyone with an EV can recharge while they are shopping or getting something to eat. And as soon as charging stations begin to pop up, it won’t stop until the entire country has enough of them that we can drive anywhere without gasoline.

Note: 500 people a year burn to death in car crashes that they would have otherwise survived… they die because the gasoline explodes. As soon as EVs start to take market share from fueled cars, you’ll see that number of people dying in collision fires will decrease since the new generation of batteris just short out, they don’t explode and they don’t catch fire even if they are crushed, piereced or baked in an oven at 400 degrees. And intelligent batteries can be designed to disable themselves in the event of an accident the same way air bags are activated in accidents.

For those unfamiliar with the technology, EVs are extremely simple– they can even be designed to work with no other moving parts than the wheels themselves, incredibly, and still give neck-snapping performance… look at the British Lightning high-performance sports car due to be sold in Europe in a few months. They do not have thousands of moving parts like conventional cars, never need smog tests, and will not waste hundreds of hours of our time at gas stations… most drivers will be plugging in at home and unplugging as soon as they leave, saving lots of time and money… imagine being able to drive past gas stations for the rest of your life. And what electricity your car does use can be supplied by solar panels on your roof rather than the utility company.

I have never been a cheerleader for Dodge until now. Thanks, Dodge, sincerely. This is a good thing.

The next step is to bring clean diesel/biodiesel into the mix because high compression diesel is atleast 30% more efficient.

The next step is to bring high compression gas/ethanol engines which are more efficient than diesel/biodiesel.

Diesel engines get better mileage than gas engines by 30% so shouldnt it be an electric with a diesel backup?

Anyway, the reason to applaud this that the solution doesnt solely rest with one single fuel or one single technology.

If we can get cars, trucks, trains and plains to run on different forms of fuel, then our nation can have multiple paths to energy independence.

Additionally, multiple forms of fuel would alsobe in the interests of national ecurity should our oil and gas supply lines be severed for any reason, its in our national interest to have alternatives to keep our country running. This cannot be accomplished if the entire country run on gasoline.

Besides, many cars today can do over 40 MPG without the expensive batteries.

Besides, many cars today can do over 40 MPG without the expensive batteries.