But Does The Ignition Switch Work?

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This is not your daddy’s Caddy. As with most electric cars, the ELR’s acceleration was instantaneous — think the Millennium Falcon with wheels. It hugged the curves like it was never going to see them again. Driving the thing, I alternated between giddy exhilaration and sheer terror.

But while the ELR is indeed a Cadillac, it appears to be built for speed, not comfort. We could feel every bump in the road, and everything inside the cab felt cramped or in the wrong place. My 6-foot-3-inch son had to fold himself into origami to fit into the back seat. And with a base price of $75,000, the ELR was out of reach as a way to assuage my ongoing midlife crisis. It’s a fun ride, but these thrills ain’t cheap.

A few years ago, after we test drove a Chevy Volt for a week (the Volt shares a lot of tech with the ELR) and loved it, we vowed that our next car would not be a carbon-belching fossil-fuel-devouring beast. Even with the federal tax credit for purchasing an electric vehicle, though, the Volt was still just a bit too rich for our blood. And the Caddy is twice the price of the Volt.

More:

There are essentially three kinds of electric car, and they all come with gotchas.

Most plug-in electric hybrids like the Volt and the ELR can run for up to 40 miles on a single battery charge before they switch over to a gas-powered engine.

There are duel-fuel hybrids like the standard Toyota Prius and the Infiniti Q50, which use batteries and a motor to augment the gas engine while starting and idling, increasing your mileage by roughly 25 percent, but they’re still primarily internal combustion vehicles (there’s a plug-in version of the Prius, too).

Then there are all-electric vehicles like the Nissan LEAF and the Tesla Model S, which need to be recharged every 80 to 260 miles. They’re emission free on your commute, but you’ll need to plan your road trips carefully.

The inconvenient truth:

In 2015, car makers will be introducing more than 20 electric vehicles of one type or another. Yet they’re unlikely to have much of an impact on the environment, or the car market, says Gary Gauthier, director of transportation at NextEnergy, a nonprofit consortium created to promote alternative energy technologies and policies in the state of Michigan.

The reason? The total cost of ownership for a gas guzzler is far less than for an electric vehicle, he says. Unless some dramatic new technology emerges — or the price of gas hits $10 a gallon — that’s how it will remain for the foreseeable future.

“If not for government regulations, electric vehicles would not even exist,” says Gauthier, who says after 48 years in the auto industry he’s seen every possible alternative to gasoline but has yet to find one that’s actually viable. (He may also be the most cynical person I’ve ever interviewed; Gauthier prefers the term "realistic.") The media has overhyped EVs, he adds, but people vote with their pocketbooks — one reason why fewer than 5 percent of all cars sold in 2013 run on anything other than fossil fuels.

And the article simply gets worse from there. It's a must-read article.