Have you heard of the Israeli startup called Better Place? Here’s a story on it. The idea is that instead of refueling for more gas or recharging an electric battery, you actually swap the batteries at stations.
Israel is a tiny country and a perfect developed place to try this. So you get an electric car with easily replaceable batteries. Once you need to “fill up” you go to a special station, unload your old battery and get a new one instead.
With gas prices being about double there compared to US, and Arab neighbors not exactly too friendly to cooperate, this is a great concept for Israel. We’ll be watching and hoping it is successful so that it may come this way too some day.
You have to consider how much it costs to manufacture the battery as well as the cost of disposing it, not to mention the environmental impact that is often omitted from electric vs. combustible fuel discussions (It is suprising to most that pollution created during battery manufacturing process is much worse then when you burn gasoline, for example).
Until we get more progress on rechargable batteries, i think Diesel-Electric Hybrid or Gas-Electric Hybrid will be our best bet in the medium future.