Peak Oil, Climate Change, and the Transition towns movement
I don't know about the rest of y'all but I'm into electric vehicles because of two reasons: a) peak oil, 2) climate change. Oh and c) because it's such a blast riding electric.
Another thing which ties those together is the Transition Movement. I'm involved a little with the movement. There's a book which covers it very well: The Transition Handbook: From Oil Dependency to Local Resilience (Transition Guides)
The main thing is to recognize the threats of peak oil & climate change. Peak Oil is a theory whose pattern has occurred in oil field after oil field around the world. Eventually an oil field gets to a point where it's harder and harder to pump out the oil, it gets more expensive, and eventually it becomes expensive enough to where the oil companies stop extracting from the field. The world passed it's oil peak a year or so ago and from here on out oil is only going to be more and more expensive. There may be short term ups and downs as supply hiccups happen, but the long term pattern is upward.
Climate change is more well known.. Our activities are building up green house gasses and we're gonna roast. That kinda thing.
Our society is completely dependent on oil, especially in the U.S. where the lack of wisdom of our forefathers left us without good mass transit systems and saddled with a highway system which is likely soon to be useless due to a lack of oil to drive the vehicles we use on those roads.
In the U.S. especially supplies of food and other necessities is done using just in time inventory systems shipped over long distance. Any hiccup in delivering these supplies will quickly turn into shortages in stores ..etc..
Those are the kind of threats that are likely and which the Transition movement is about addressing. But it's not a doom and gloom thing, it's about positively focusing on solutions and especially developing local resources so our local towns can survive.
The reason I'm going into this is I was just interviewed in one of the local newspapers about peak oil and the Transition movement. It's a pretty good article, does much better than I just did in explaining it.
http://www.metroactive.com/metro/06.24.09/cover-0925.html
I've put some further resources here: http://www.7gen.com/website-categories/transition-towns
The transition towns movement is centered here: http://transitiontowns.org/
We have also to consider whether the electrical grid can actually cope should a large number of us convert to electric cars. Currently the answer is definitely not! We would also need to build an infrastructure of charging points (a bit like the old parking meters).
The major way to be a 'transitioner' is to reduce energy usage - no matter whether from fossil fuels, nuclear, green supplies by building local resilience where ever possible.
We have also to consider whether the electrical grid can actually cope should a large number of us convert to electric cars. Currently the answer is definitely not!
The electrical grid is more than sufficient for the task as long as we charge at night, using timers. We have both sufficient power generation capacity and sufficient transmission capacity for a hundred million cars, as long as we are measuring off-peak usage.
However, we should still pursue grid and generation improvements. I'm just saying that we don't need to delay electric vehicles while we do so.
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For a fairly complete "How to" have a look into Bill Mollisons Permaculture Concept.
Another important aspect of the problem is the loss of genetic variety in our food souces, addressed by organisations like Seed Savers.
Mycelium Running is also essential reading in my opinion.
This information may be used entirely at your own risk.
There is always a way if there is no other way!