"The American People killed it - not big oil. Middle America likes it SUVs and, pick up trucks and Hummers. If people bought the electric car in droves they would have continued to sell it because it would have made money. You can blame Big Oil all you want - it is what people buy that drives markets. That is why Gasoline in my opinion needs to remain at 4 dollars a gallon so people will start to change their driving habits."
Middle America has needs different than either coasts or Europe. To put it in perspective, almost every state in Middle America is at least the size of the country of England (Not the UK, just England) or larger. To transport our products and services, we need larger, more powerful vehicles, or else our economies go bust. To put it in perspective, say you want to get a cheeseburger with fries and a soft drink, with a rice krispie treat. The wheat is from rural Kansas, the beef is from Iowa, the wheat mill for the bread is from Minnesota, the cheese for the burger is from Wisconsin, the beef processing plant is in Missouri, the rice is from Arkansas, the pigs to make the marshmallows for the rice krispie treats are in Montana, the potatoes from the fries are from Idaho, and the corn oil to make the fries are from Illinois. The kola syrup itself for the Coke is from Africa, but imported into Louisiana since it's a major port. To make sure that the Northeast, California and most of the world gets its burgers, we need to have powerful vehicles to transport our vast amounts of natural resources.
You notice in countries such as Germany, the UK and Italy that major, large cities are only a few miles away from each other. In the U.S., they're very far away from each other, just because, again, individual states in our midsection are larger than many European countries. To put it in perspective, the same distance it would take to drive from the Netherlands to French-Spanish border, would barely clear you from Port Arthur, Texas to El Paso, Texas. That's a single state, folks. And it's not even the largest state we have.
In conclusion, we need cars to keep our country going. And because the world depends on so many of our exports and our industries, if we can't get our products across the country, the whole world goes into recession. If you doubt what I have to say, then you're probably using a Sony computer with a Linux O.S. while listening to a song by Coldplay on a Samsung MP3 Player and watching BBC. If you're doing that, good for you, you're using alternative products. But chances are, you're using a Windows O.S., a Dell or some other American based company's computer, using an IPod while listening to an American band, and you're watching the Simpsons.