"Big Car" (currently a Tesla owner) wonders if pure electric cars are a fad and if there is a better answer....
I wonder if the current technology pure electric is transitional but also don't think hybrid is the answer either. If you so rarely need the ICE component just buy an electric and rent an ICE car when you need range rather than carry the complication and mass of a generator?
But I also wonder about the ecological impact of scrappage replacing ICE for electric. NZ power is pretty green, ~80% renewable, so if you can grid charge source isn't a problem but wonder about the true impacts and payback.
For example, I have a small economical Abarth 500. In real world use (ie my own records) it does around 7.4l/100km (~32 US Mpg, 38 U.K. Mpg) and has been on the road for 11 years, ~200,000km, yet is still reliable. Say I get an equivalent electric car: a new full electric 500 (below right) is far heavier (~1,400kg vs ~1,000kg) so you must assume consumes more resources to manufacture but fewer to run. Then consider off the eco cost of recycling (or worse) ~1,000kg of perfectly serviceable ICE car.
In reality it would be traded and stay on the road, but you could argue somewhere down the ownership chain an older dirty car will drop out of the fleet. So complicated,, perhaps the answer is not cars....