Watch full size video:

WASHINGTON — Now that automakers are all gearing up to make electric vehicles, consumers should have existence getting a choice of capacious, speedy, gasoline-free models that charge up at a standard 110-volt socket.

So when will those cars roll out of factories so plentifully that prices drop to what ordinary people can offer?

That was the question at the Electric Drive Transportation Association conference and exhibition in Washington last week, and in succession Capitol Hill for the reason that well, for the reason that the Big Three automakers made a pitch for aid. The recession, the credit crunch and the dominance of oil-driven transportation will make it difficult.

However, automakers take care the future — in addition gas price spikes, diminishing oil resources, the emergency to divide carbon dioxide to prevent climate catastrophe. They also see an incoming president, Barack Obama, who during the time that a senator co-sponsored a plan to accord. tax credits for electric vehicles and now calls for 1 the multitude plug-in, hybrid, made-in-America cars that get up to 150 miles per four quarts.

As part of their pitch to Congress, Ford, Chrysler and General Motors promised to push ahead with electric vehicles, but also though they’re money-losers at present. Last week, Ford for the first time announced details of what it has in the works during electric-drive vehicles, including a battery-electric van slated commercial fleet use in 2010 and a battery-electric sedan in 2011.

Japan is going marked by electricity, too. Mitsubishi, for prototype, plans to launch its small iMiEV marked by electricity car nearest summer and test it in California, Europe and in New Zealand. Nissan plans a Real Car with a 100-mile range that it promises will convenient all highway safety tests and offer all the hot gizmos such being of the class who GPS and heated seats.

“They’re everything tagging up steady the need for greater electrification of transportation,” said Brian Wynne, president of the Electric Drive Transportation Association. Noting that the Detroit car executives showed up in Washington in hybrids this time, he said: “What it tells me is they get it, they want to transition over.”

However, some of the problems in getting to mass scale and profitability on electric vehicles tolerate beyond automakers’ control. The unknown future price of gasoline makes it impossible for pretended buyers to calculate cost savings. Parts suppliers are struggling in a difficult economy. Batteries are still the biggest technological challenge, and the main domain where relating to electricity vehicles require government help, Wynne said.

“We’ve proven the general. We’ve had a lot of yield announcements. The question now is: How do we get the contortion up fast?” Wynne aforesaid. “And the faster we can get to mass and start greening that fleet, the quicker we get to benefits that are captured — oil displacement, reduction of greenhouse gases and enhanced household well-being — stop flowing money overseas, for example, and spasmodic effort investing in jobs here.”

What’s really caught upon in Washington is the luxuriously cost of oil dependency, Wynne said.

“It is unacceptable by virtually anyone’s estimation for this country to be 97 or 98 percent dependent on oil for the movement of people and goods in this country,” he said.

The U.S. is sitting onward what Wynne calls a “national security asset.” During off-peak epochs, he said, the electric grid could fuel more than 70 percent of the light-duty vehicles in succession the roads today.