First, although electric cars are nippy, stylish and as easy to drive as conventional vehicles, electric motoring has some distinct disadvantages. Such as...?

First, although electric cars are nippy, stylish and as easy to drive as conventional vehicles, electric motoring has some distinct disadvantages. Such as...? Second, they are not really as green as their promoters claim. So? I care about convenience (less/no trips to the fill-up station) and overall cost. But that final 1% of journeys presumably includes the summer holiday when people pile into the car and head off for the coast. Hopping on the train laden with suitcases and children may not be an attractive alternative. So rent a gas car. Plan for this when figuring the ongoing costs of your electric car. And even the relatively short ranges that salesmen advertise may be optimistic. On a cold, wet night when lots of electrical systems are running and the vehicle is laden with passengers and luggage, a car may lose around a third of its supposed range. So require that this be disclosed, so people know to get something with at least 1.5x the range they'll need in a day. I guess those two things were the "distinct disadvantages" mentioned earlier. Neither is terribly convincing. Although electric cars may not themselves produce greenhouse gases, generating the electricity they use does. How green they are depends on the fuel mix at the power plants in the country in which they are driven. This should solve itself in a decade or two if we stop letting the NIMBYs block nuclear plants. And all the already-sold electric cars will benefit just as much as the not-yet-sold ones. The only efficient way to cut greenhouse-gas emissions is to impose a carbon tax. And here I suppose we have the purpose of the article. But why not just stop subsidizing it before adding a tax?