There are a slew of electric cars from the gamut of automakers around the world set to hit the market in the next two years. This confluence of electric offerings got me thinking. How and why is this all coming together now?  The way I see it, there are four possibilities.

1. The various automakers have been trying their darndest for the last twenty years to develop electric cars but just recently has technology developed to the point to make them technologically and economically feasible.  This is possible, except that there isn’t anything going into these electric models that hasn’t been built into fleeting prototypes a dozen times over the last decade or so.

2. There just wasn’t demand for these cars until gas hit $4 a gallon, and only then did it become worthwhile for the automakers to start the development process.  This is possible, but only if every one of my economics professors lied to me in college.  Why wouldn’t the car makers be developing an alternative electric vehicle before now?  What was the limiting factor that made them all believe that the demand for electric vehicles wasn’t legitimate until now?  And what about those Japanese companies that were planning a hundred years into the future?  They didn’t see the electric car on the horizon either?

3. They aren’t really coming in 2010 or 2011 or anytime soon after that.  It wouldn’t be the first time that automakers dangled a carrot in front of us and then pulled it away.  Could it be that the up and coming electric cars aren’t really up or coming?  Possible, but it seems unlikely when you consider how many different manufacturer’s are claiming to have an electric model in their near future.

4. Big Money was changing hands between Big Oil and Big Auto.  Somebody had to be gaining something from somebody in order to keep these cars out of sight.

Only time will tell, but my money is on #4.