Science: Volts Wagon Does It, Again

Electric cars look sharp, run cheap, but will they sell?

When Walter Reuther, the late president of the United Auto Workers, spoke of the automobile as the "Fifth Freedom," he was not referring to the electric car. Dowdy, slow, limited in range and sometimes adorned—in its first incarnation around the turn of the century—with crystal vases and plush cushions, Grandma's old electric had all the sex appeal of a limp handshake. Henry Ford's flivvers and gushers of cheap Texas oil eventually drove electric vehicles off the American road and onto the American golf course,...