Don't count on seeing Electric Cars in traffic soon. Sales so far have been microscopic and they're likely to stay that way for some time because of limited supplies. GM sold 250 to 350 Chevy Volts this month and Nissan sold less than 10 Leaf sedans in the past two weeks. Production for both is slowly ramping up.
Great article on some of the reasons why Electric cars went from 34% in 1900 to only 1% today. And it is not what you think!
Instead, you'll find examples in the NYTimes article where the culture we live in and the technologies we use are constantly shaping and being shaped by one another, and it’s this messy and unpredictable process that determines winners and losers.
The article also cites an article from 1983 by the science historian Ruth Schwartz Cowan called “How the Refrigerator Got Its Hum,”. The deciding factor had nothing to do with the tech itself. We use electric refrigerators today because General Electric had lots of money and gas-refrigerator companies like Servel did not.