Reddit mentions of Who Killed the Electric Car?

Talk about history repeating itself. I worked for Saturn Corp in Utah during the early 2000's. Out in California legislators passed this same law requiring automakers a 10% minimum of zero-emissions vehicles. The result was the Saturn EV1 which was the worlds first production electric vehicle. It was a wildly successful. The catch was Saturn dealerships did not sell these cars, they were only available as a two year lease and leased only to California residents.

The first gen had about a 150 mile range per charge. Later, General Motors acquired the patent on an obscure battery technology from an independent inventor that gave the third gen a 300 mile per charge range. There are several theories that surround the motives and parties involved that would eventually sue the State of California to overturn the law that required the production of electric vehicles. In the end every single electric vehicle was recalled and destroyed and the entire story was quickly swept under the rug. I highly recommend the documentary Who Killed The Electric Car? It's both fascinating and infuriating.

This time around, with California mandating a 15% minimum and more than 10 years (the new regualtion is set to for 2025) before it is enforced, we will see an absolute avalanche of lobbies doing everything they can to scrap it.

Fully electric cars have been around since the 30's. See:
Who killed the electric car