Recent moves by Japan’s two largest automakers suggest that the electric car, after more than 100 years of development and several brief revivals, still is not ready for prime time – and may never be.

The reality is that consumers continue to show little interest in electric vehicles, or EVs, which dominated U.S. streets in the first decade of the 20th century before being displaced by gasoline-powered cars.

Despite the promise of “green” transportation – and despite billions of dollars in investment, most recently by Nissan Motor Co – EVs continue to be plagued by many of the problems that eventually scuttled electrics in the 1910s and more recently in the 1990s. Those include high cost, short driving range and lack of charging stations.

The public’s lack of appetite for battery-powered cars persuaded the Obama administration last week to back away from its aggressive goal to put 1 million electric cars on U.S. roads by 2015.

Deutsche Utopie ungebrochen

“Elektroautos werden kommen, da habe ich keine Zweifel,” sagte der Präsident des Verbandes der Automobilindustrie (VDA), Matthias Wissmann, der Tageszeitung “Die Welt” vom Freitag. Die deutsche Regierung hat das Ziel, bis zum Jahr 2020 eine Million Elektroautos auf Deutschlands Straßen zu bringen. Bundeskanzlerin Angela Merkel (CDU) hatte diese Zielmarke erst im Herbst bekräftigt. Anfang 2012 waren in Deutschland rund 4.500 Elektrofahrzeuge zugelassen; im Jahresverlauf gab es nach Angaben des Kraftfahrt-Bundesamtes (KBA) knapp 3.000 Neuzulassungen von E-Mobilen.