2011 Nissan LEAF (© Nissan North America)Click to enlarge picture

2012 Nissan Leaf

Electric vehicles were supposed to be the solution to all of this country's fossil-fuel woes. Proponents promised that EVs would offer zero-emissions transportation and eliminate our dependence on foreign oil, and that they could be cheaply refueled anywhere, any time — just plug one in and recharge it wherever there was an outlet to spare.

Unfortunately, it seems that those promises may have been a bit optimistic, premature or both. The truth is that today's electric and plug-in vehicles are expensive, inconvenient to charge and not quite as "green" as initially thought. Consequently, in the highly politicized automotive climate that exists after Detroit's near-collapse and massive, taxpayer-funded bailouts, the very idea of a road-ready electric car has become a political flashpoint, with rhetoric flying hot and heavy on both sides of the issue.

What's more, EVs aren't selling. While the government continues to push EV-based grant and loan money and consumer tax incentives, Chevrolet Volts molder on dealer lots amid production shutdowns due to lack of demand. Nissan Leaf EV sales have failed to hit the modest 10,000 units the automaker hoped to offload in 2011.

So what happened to the "future of the automobile," and, more importantly, can EVs survive in a country that seems not to want them?

Read: Building a Better Electric Vehicle

The Current Landscape
If you pay attention to what manufacturers are touting, the situation hardly seems dire. Of the major auto manufacturers, only Mitsubishi and Nissan offer pure electrics for sale in the United States. General Motors offers the range-extended Volt, and Ford, BMW, MINI, Audi and Honda will soon to put their own EVs on the road. "Concept" EVs abound — everything from Volkswagen's E-Bugster shown at the 2012 North American International Auto Show in Detroit to an upscale Infiniti LE sedan concept that bowed at the New York Auto Show. The problem is that real-world sales don't support this optimism.

Through March 2012, Mitsubishi moved 212 units of its i compact EV in four states since deliveries began in December 2011. The Volt and the Leaf both fell short of their modest 10,000-unit sales goals in 2011, with 7,671 and 9,674 models sold, respectively. In the case of the Volt, the sales slump was prominent enough that GM shut down Volt production for five weeks in March and April, and will again for a week in July to deal with bloated inventory.

Read:  A Tale of 3 EVs

The Pricing Problem
Electric vehicles aren't cheap. For instance, the Mitsubishi i is a $30,000 car that is smaller than a $13,000 Ford Fiesta and has a range of less than 100 miles. The Nissan Leaf starts at $35,200 and the Chevy Volt at $39,145, while the upcoming Ford Focus EV will sell for just under $40,000 and the Toyota RAV4 EV costs more than $50,000. The federal government offers $7,500 tax credits for these vehicles, and some states also offer incentives, but even so you are still paying Audi A3 or BMW 1-Series money for vehicles with serious inherent limitations.

Read: Toyota Readies RAV4 EV for Production

Automakers, it seems, are pulling a play from the consumer electronics industry and shifting their admittedly significant research and development costs onto early adopters. The problem, of course, is that the product and ownership cycle for, say, an iPad is worlds apart from that of an automobile. New and highly upgraded versions of various gadgets appear nearly every year, while each iteration of a vehicle will survive for several years without the likelihood of a price drop or the promise of a significant improvement in functionality with the next version, as with tech products.

Also, Generation Y, the demographic group that recent studies show drives less, eschews traditional car ownership and is tech-obsessed and highly eco-conscious — that is, the one group perfectly poised to embrace EVs — is priced out of consideration.

View Pictures:  The EV Revolution

Click to enlarge pictureMitsubishi i (© Mitsubishi Motors North America)

2012 Mitsubishi i

'Zero Emissions'— Not as Green as It Sounds
You can buy bumper stickers for your EV pointing out that there's no tailpipe on your car, and therefore no emissions, which truly is great, except that the finished car represents just one step in the life cycle of the vehicle, and buyers have become hip to this. The materials used to make the batteries for electric vehicles — including, in most cases, copper, nickel, cobalt, tantalum, tin and tungsten — must be acquired through earth-unfriendly mining processes, much of which takes place in the conflict-addled region of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Not to mention that much of the power grid in the United States is coal-fired, meaning that even while charging a zero-emission EV you are likely burning fossil fuels. And in some cases, charging an EV can create more emissions than driving a fuel-burning car.

View Slideshow:  The Most Fuel-Efficient 2012 Cars

Cost, Again
The high price of EVs means it's nearly impossible to recoup the vehicle cost against fuel savings. In fact, a recent New York Times article noted that the initial cost of a Chevy Volt could take up to 27 years to pay off, assuming it was regularly driven farther than its battery-only range allows. That number drops to eight years, or two years longer than the average American retains a new vehicle, if "gas costs $5 a gallon and the driver remained exclusively on battery power."

Watch Video:  2012 Chevrolet Volt

At the same time, the battery packs used in EVs are not only expensive — Ford CEO Alan Mulally was recently quoted at pricing a 23-kilowatt-hour battery pack for pure electrics at "around $12,000 to $15,000" — but their performance degrades over time. Whereas a gas- or diesel-powered vehicle will continue to perform as advertised with regular care and maintenance, a Nissan Leaf could be running at just 80 percent of its original capacity after five years, and a mere 70 percent after a decade — and that's by Mitsubishi's own estimates. That's a hard pill to swallow when you're shelling out $35K for a bug-eyed hatchback.

Read: Waiting for the Better Electric Car

The Good News
Electric vehicles in their current incarnation are specialists, good for densely populated urban areas where emissions are of greater concern and where gas prices tend to be highest. In fact, for all of our land, the U.S. is one of the most urbanized populations in the world, with more than 80 percent of its people residing in urban and suburban areas. That means the oft-cited issue of EV recharging infrastructure — that is, there's nowhere to charge the things — could be solved relatively quickly with proper planning. In other words, solving the bulk of the recharging infrastructure issue doesn't mean putting a charging station on every street corner in America — a daunting task given the scope of the country — but rather by concentrating on the densely packed urban and suburban areas where the limited-range, highly efficient vehicles make the most sense to begin with.

And while we chide the Obama administration for focusing almost exclusively on electric vehicles at the expense of other alternatives — notably, compressed natural gas and hydrogen-powered vehicles, which have their own benefits and limitations — that singular focus and financial support has allowed automakers and others to continue making technological breakthroughs. Batteries will become lighter, costs will drop and driving ranges will increase as charging times decrease, all while a reliable recharging infrastructure is put in place. Meanwhile, recent studies show that Americans are making their new-vehicle purchases based mostly on fuel prices, an obvious advantage for vehicles that use no gas and can be fully charged for just a few dollars' worth of electricity.

Compare: Nissan Leaf vs. Mitsubishi i vs. Chevrolet Volt

Conclusion
Any car, even a futuristic, zero-emissions technological marvel, is still the second-largest purchase behind a house for most people. At this stage, electric vehicles are more proof-of-concept demonstrations of a manufacturer's green bona fides than affordable and viable means of transportation, and EV sales demonstrate this. But luckily, EVs will continue to be developed in parallel with — not as an immediate replacement for — internal-combustion-engine vehicles. Given time and technological advancements, who knows? They may even turn out to be the future.

Josh Condon is the editor of MSN Autos' Exhaust Notes. Based in Los Angeles, his work has appeared in publications including The New York Times, Esquire, Popular Science, Men's Journal and Ralph Lauren RL Magazine.

See what's trending and why in real time on msnNOW.

Like us on MSN Autos Facebook and follow us on Twitter

Find new and used cars with our mobile app.