Mark,
let's start at the top. The batteries are always an issue. Even companies like Toyota who have spent billions of dollars to get their hybrids right admit that the batteries are an issue. You should not charge them full, you should not drain them completely. Neither condition is good for them. Partial charging is also NOT recommended. Memory effect specifically an issue for lithium batteries, but partial charging (especially bump charging in the middle of a discharge cycle) still isn't the best way to do things.
EPA range on the Tesla Roadstar is 221 miles, using a very, very light duty cycle run. As noted in this road test:
http://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/...ster-road_test - they got more than 160 miles, but if they ran the car on the highway at speed, it wasn't going to last very long. One European Autobahn test had the car pretty much running out of energy quickly if driving like a sports car on the open road.
The batteries also tend to overheat if you run the car hard, more than a couple of quarter mile runs (12 seconds or so full throttle) is enough to get the engine controller to shut down the fun.
Recharge time on 120V is a consumer friendly 37 hours. If you happen to be able to wing up a 220V connector, it will recharge overnight, pulling 30-70A during the cycle. The vast majority of city dwellers will not be able to use this type of car because they will lack a proper place to plug it in (think condos, or houses with only outdoor parking, or worse, street parking).
"no gas to by". Mark, we are lucky to live in a province where the vast majority of our power is created by hydro electric dams. However, if even a small percentage of cars in Quebec were converted to electric power, it is likely that we would have add things like natural gas or even coal fired plants to be able to generate enough extra power to support all of this. In the US, where hydro power is rare, they are often burning oil, natural gas, or coal to generate the electricity. In the end, it is the same difference, you can burn it in your car, or burn it at the power plant and suffer the line losses in getting it to your house.
So the car isn't a no pollution option, just a pollution shifter. The range isn't very exciting (I live at home and knock off 30,000 plus kms a year, or almost 45 miles a day). If I actually had to travel downtown from the burbs every day, run some errands, etc, I would be very leery of a car with a limited range and no simple way to recharge.