I was under the impression electric cars could deliver more performance and adrenaline than petrol cars, because an electric motor produces maximum torque at all speeds. Is this not so?
Sure, a Tesla Roadster can do 0-60 mph in four seconds, but it doesn't _sound_ as cool as a Lamborghini when it does so.
Seriously though, I would be very sad if internal combustion engine powered cars vanished. I personally suspect that the future of personal transportation is still gonna be based on liquid fuels (maybe cellulosic or even algae-derived ethanol) because they're so much easier to store and transport than anything else.
Hydrogen storage requires weird high-pressure containers and exotic materials. Electricity storage requires weird toxic metals placed in weird toxic solutions. Ethanol storage requires a bucket.
There's a lot of research funding going into biofuels right now, but unfortunately the basic numbers don't make sense for biofuels as the world's primary energy source. You can convert solar energy into carbohydrates, extract the carbohydrates and convert them into ethanol, transport the ethanol to thousands of gas stations (sitting on prime commercial real estate), and combust it to create pressure that's harnessed to rotate an axle. There's a significant percentage of waste at each of those steps, and you end up requiring, like, all of the Earth's surface area for growing biofuel crops. (Even with algae.)
Alternately, you can harness sunlight directly, distribute it across the existing grid (fairly unobtrusively), temporarily store it in batteries or capacitors, and directly power an electric motor with it. Electric storage also benefits from the same economies of scale as laptops and cell phones.
My opinion, a humble one, is that biofuels are better suited for niche applications where electricity can't be used.
