The power and unlimited self-delusion of the oil industry and its outsized impact on official US policy is a massive roadblock to this concept. Think about how different the world would be if we no longer gave a damn at all about the Middle East as a "strategic" concern for the oil we still need there...you can see a brief hint of it now with the Saudis and their pique of late. Imagine the state of Israel and the Emirates if the USA did not have to feign interest in them as well...the world would be a better place for it.

Beyond that, the energy-producing companies and utilities that depend on fossil fuels for their business model cannot be overcome in our current system of bought and paid for politicians and one party of the two party system being caught in a fantasy land of denial and lap-dog status.

The road ahead is obvious. Whether we run out of profitable, easy to produce oil, maximize the production of dirty oil or face the reality of climate change and the catastrophe that is already brewing and about to boil over - the era of oil is ending one way or another. FOr years the Peak Oil theory also maintained that we would run out of energy to transition to alternatives as well as run out of oil.

We have this one last chance to accept reality and channel the available energy to create the energy sources of tomorrow - solar, wind, hydro, and especially geothermal. Electric cars are a good start, but we really NEED to hit that 'S-curve' pronto!

it was predicated on projected demand being constant, and did not foresee a global economic meltdown in 2008.

We could do this in ten years with the right leadership. Regardless of who's elected, it will happen, but too late to avoid the catastrophe that is coming in my opinion.

The Tesla Model 3 and the Chevy Bolt will be the Netscape browser.

I personally wouldn't go back to an ICE for my daily driver for any reason. But I am not the market. EVs outside a handful of enclaves mostly in SoCal urban areas are a fringe novelty. It's easy to be complacent when I see all 3 public chargers in a fairly small far suburb of a southern city in use. But then I recall my commutes and trips around that city and the hundreds of cars I see weekly without seeing any EVs except those same half dozen or so that share my local chargers. I can look at record sales for Tesla and stable sales for Leafs in the 30k-50k range...globally, compared to 65 million cars. I can see the yes petulant and shallow, but pervasive scorn from car enthusiasts levelled at EVs even when they outperform their ICE counterparts. Will these things change? Sure, but not in a decade or even a generation absent a massive oil price/availability shock or a game-changing revolution in battery technology. It's irrational, but the mass market shows no sign of being able to cope with a world where unlimited range at a second's notice is no longer the norm.

I know two people with a Chevy Volt who have said they often have to force their car into gas mode just to keep the fuel from going stale.

I think the biggest problem electrics have is that the more popular they become, the more they will hold gas prices down.

* Venezuela already is an economic catastrophe, in part because their socialist government no longer has the money to keep the promises it made.

* Russia is obviously getting economically hurt by the "kinda"-embargo against them because of Ukraine: RT is writing articles how Russia is not suffering at all from the lack of trade. (They doth protest too much.) Though I expect Russia to adapt and rebound and the recent diplomatically icy climate to thaw in a few years.

And the Middle-East?

* The syrian civil-war was caused by years of drought caused by global warming. With lots of industry destroyed in the civil-war, oil is their best route to rebuild. But if the price of oil really collapses even more 10 years from now...

* The same argument can be made for Iraq.

Iran and Saudi-Arabia will both massively suffer from global-warming as the Persian Gulf heats up. Summers will be VERY hot in southern Iran and eastern Saudi-Arabia.

* Iran will also suffer from the next oil-crash, but their countryside is very diverse in climate. Iran can always fall back on exporting agrarian products.

* Saudi-Arabia is rife with religious fanatics and an under-class held in check with presents from the government, paid for with oil-money. What happens if Saudi-Arabia can no longer buy domestic peace with oil-money?
Saudi-Arabia has said that it wants to diversify away from oil. But to where?
Does Saudi-Arabia want to build up manufacturing? Tech? Can you imagine tech-companies with free-thinking engineers and scientists setting up shop in the homeland of Al-Qaeda and ISIS?
BUT Saudi-Arabia is currently going on a massive bribing&spending campaign in Africa: They are buying and stealing massive swaths of land intended for saudi companies for agrarian production. Saudi-Arabia is setting up colonies in Africa to feed their homeland.

Why is this the best idea we have, converting the air we breath into power to drive a metal dinosaur around. We know it means we're sowing the seeds of our own demise!

I need a truck for my work. So I have a small gas powered vehicle, the smallest one possible, made in USA. I cannot wait until I have an EV truck. Would trade what I have, in a heartbeat. So sick of gasoline!

Edison had EV's in 1895, and with Ford had experimented with different batteries for their EV's in 1914. Unfortunately, the thrill of 'explosions under the hood' and the mass production of internal combustion engines for and during both WW's, combined with US alliance with Texas / Middle East politics were thought to have sealed the fate of research into the batteries for EV's.
http://www.wired.com/2010/06/henry-ford-thomas-edison-ev/

This video suggests that EV's time has finally come. Let's hope our carbon saturated environment can hold out another 2 decades before it collapses.