Leading the Charge on Electric Cars

Rachel Haig: I'm Rachel Haig from Morningstar.com. We're at the Chicago Auto Show and we're seeing a lot of alternative energy vehicles, but questions remain about the demand that's actually there for them. The New York Times recently reported that hybrids were less than three percent of auto sales in the last three years.

There has been a lot more buzz about electric vehicles than alternative fuels like ethanol and hydrogen, but there are still questions about electric vehicles, like their battery life, how much batteries will cost and how far they can go on a single charge.

Let's take a look at what's on the floor. We're with the Chevy Volt which has definitely been getting a lot of buzz here. It seems pretty neat. It can get 40 miles on just electricity and after that a gasoline backup generator kicks in to give it a range of 300 miles. It takes about eight hours to charge which could be a problem.

The neat thing is it has a phone application for iPhone, Blackberry and Android, which lets you do several things: you can turn the car on or off, you can lock it, unlock it and you can set it to charge now or later and check on the status of its charge, which is kind of a cool feature. Chevy hasn't announced the price tag for this, but we think it will be about $40,000 and it's scheduled to go on sale in November.

Another interesting alternative energy vehicle on display is Hyundai's Blue-Will. And it is certainly one of the more interesting looking cars, and I'm not sure if I mean that in a good way. But like Chevy's Volt, it can go 40 miles on just electricity and after that it turns into a hybrid with fairly good fuel economy.

The interesting thing about Hyundai's Blue-Will is that it has two ways of providing more energy to itself. It has solar cells on the roof to allow it to charge and it has a thermal generator that turns hot gas into electricity that can be used. So it seems like a promising way to keep the electricity going and possibly extend the range in the future.

Now we're looking at Toyota's new FT-CH concept, which looks a lot stranger than it actually is. Although it has an exotic appearance, it actually just seems like a smaller Prius. It's about 22 inches shorter and other than that it's a standard hybrid. But the idea according to Toyota is to expand the Prius family and this would be a more efficient and more price effective version for some people at the lower end of the market.

Another way Toyota is looking to expand their Prius line is by developing plug-in models like the one behind me. This model would go electric-only at first like several of the other cars we've seen and then switch over to hybrid technology. However, looking at the specifications, it only goes 13 miles on electricity only. So it doesn't seem like this is a car you would want if you're looking for an electric engine, but I guess Toyota is at least sticking their toes in the water trying to figure out what will work.

A lot of car makers are trying to produce affordable alternative energy vehicles for the general public, but if you're looking for a sports car, Fisker has something for you with their Karma. It will set you back about $90,000, but it's fairly high performance. It has a range of 50 miles on electricity only and 300 miles after the hybrid engines kicks in. It has top speeds of about 95 miles per hour on the electric only engine, which is fairly impressive. You'll start seeing these in stores in early 2011.

There are definitely problems remaining with electric engines like battery prices, battery charging times, but it seems like there is definitely potential and promise in the next several years. I'm Rachel Haig from Morningstar. Thanks for watching.