All-battery electric cars are only a dead end if you approach them from a standpoint of "replicate existing car culture and usage patterns as much as possible" as opposed to from a standpoint of "stepping stone to fundamentally change the same."

Now, that may not work, in which case Tesla will have ended up with beautifully engineered cars that occupy a dead-end niche market that either will or ought to be eventually be imploded by improved mass transit anyway.

My gut opinion is that our eventual transition away from hydrocarbons in the realm of personal transportation is going to be driven not by whatever solution is "best" from a technical standpoint, but by whichever option is best positioned both in the marketplace and in the political sphere when hydrocarbons either become unaffordably priced or massively restricted. Musk might end up winning that game.

-Merc
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