> I know that electric cars would need more speed capability,  and 
 > that range seems to be most often the quoted "problem" with them.  
Roy,
 There's a book out that explains about electric vehicles; it was written as 
sort of a Doit Yourself guide to conversion of a gas vehicle to electric.
The author is quite the evengelist, so you do need to take some of his 
calculations with a grain of salt, especially the cost of operation 
comparisons. He tended to exaggerate the cost of operation of a gas-fueled 
car and minimized the costs of the electric. However, he did have some facts 
that were based on his own experience and that of others who have operated 
EVs for some time:
Batteries have a finite life, and it might be as short as 25,000 miles. And 
they require maintenance during that time; adding water, cleaning the tops, 
and charging are regular chores. If your battery pack costs even $500.00, a 
hundred thousand miles worth gets expensive.
There are few limits to range or speed, but it's real hard to have both. And 
simply adding larger batteries isn't the answer, as the vehicle now has to 
pull even more dead weight.
Regarding charging of EV's, will it require an upgrade to the grid, or can 
off-peak charging or flywheel storage do the job, etc.:
It's really not much of a chore to figure out how many KWHR worth of power is 
in a tank of gasoline. Gasoline is a bit less than 100,000 BTUs per gallon, 
and there's 3414 BTUs per KWHR. Do the math for your vehicle then multiply 
times the numbers of your neighbors to see if it's feasable to do a wholesale 
conversion in your area. Hint: most electric power companies are approaching 
their total capacity on peak-usage days, so you'd better believe that any EV 
charging will HAVE to be off-peak.
To drag this closer to on-topic, it might be an interesting excercise to 
calculate how many solar panels or how large a wind generator it might 
require to provide the power for one's own vehicle at home.
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