[LogicDesigner]

Here's an interesting side note. A lot of people dismissed the Toyota Prius as a money-losing failure in its early days. Now it is the third best-selling car line in the world and it is estimated they make $3,000 profit on each one, similar to what they make on conventional cars.

[goldstategop]

The Totoya Prius is a hybrid. Its a good car - combining the best advantage of the internal combustion engine - gas powered car with an electric assist battery. This technology is proven.

The Nissan Leaf on the other hand is an electric car and has more limitations than a hybrid. Its still nowhere close to being profitable.

[Blood of Tyrants]

But the big difference is the Prius is a hybrid that allows unlimited range where the Leaf is limited to about 40-60 miles between charges.

[Gay State Conservative]

My diesel is rated by the EPA at 45mpg Highway.In reality it gets closer to 50mpg Highway.Under favorable conditions I can travel 700 miles (plus)on a tankful.And when it's empty I can "recharge" it in about four minutes at any one of 100,000 "recharging" stations from coast to coast and border to border.

Plug in vehicles? No thanks.Not in this lifetime...or the next.

[GeronL]

didn’t the taxpayers build them a $1.4 billion battery factory?

[ROCKLOBSTER]

There is only one very cool thing in the hybrid technology: They replaced the transmission with an electric motor(s)

That means you have a torquey car with a heavy battery load. The same car with a turbo and about half or less of the batteries would actually perform quite well and not have that scary battery replacement cost.

All that green-eco-claptrap is just that. Cars aren’t the problem anyway...In the big cities, diesel trucks are. Stop-and-go delivery trucks and buses could be run as electrics, with appropriately-sized, small-displacement generators running constantly to keep the batteries charged. They could run on gasoline, propane or LNG.