@Xiaolong - I can only speak for myself of course, but if every public charger disappeared tomorrow it would make no difference to my day-to-day electric car use, nor would it have affected my purchase decision. The key issues for me were home charging and solar panels. Even the supercharger network is just frosting on the cake (very tasty frosting). It's true that my 200 mile range is a nice cushion, but I have often felt the public charging concerns are highly over-rated. Who wants to play roulette with charger availability to get home?

Here's a few hard numbers to consider - I have the PG&E electric car rate (E9a) which costs about 3.8 cents per kWh from midnite to 7 AM (tier 1). I charge at 240 VAC and 30 amps, or about 7.2 kWh per hour. That is about 27 cents per hour of charging. Higher tier levels cost more but solar panels can easily keep you in tier 1 (443 kwh or less) all month long. So I'm paying about 1.3 cents per mile to drive my Tesla, and gas is over $4 per gallon right now. Yes, I am a happy California driver.

Lithium can be fully recycled but you can't manufacture a million new lithium batteries by recycling ten thousand old ones. Besides, I don't plan on recycling my lithium car battery for a good long time, so no dibs ;-)

Whether the cost of extraction is too high is a moving target. The history of the Mountain Pass rare earth mine in California is a good example. Cost of extraction closed the mine until China restricted rare earth exports - we have now reopened it. It's good to know the lithium is there if we need it.

Someone accusing John Voelcker of being biased in favor of Tesla - what a refreshing change of pace.

Lets see, buying a Volt is a no-brainer and 4950 people bought Teslas last quarter. That's a lot of people with no brains! BTW, the Model S is made in Fremont, California, and i've been to Detroit. I don't see how that's a plus for the Volt.

Since the Supreme Court decided that corporations are people and have the right of free speech, companies will be able to buy elections in North Carolina, but not sell cars. I think I'm beginning to understand how those two things can be linked.

Getting the shorts to pay off your government loan - the irony of that is just too sweet. Way to go, Elon.

@Dude - "acting like your an expert that's just ignorant" - Acting? Who's acting? But maybe next time I'll visit the Planet of Made-Up Numbers like some of the other posters here and I can drag back something that meets your approval.

The 20 MPG I quoted is the EPA rating for city driving on gasoline only, and it requires premium too - from govenment ratings website and Wikipedia, but thanks for playing.