It's simple: Just plug it in and go

Yes! The on-ramp to Interstate 526 on Daniel Island is wide open and just long enough to see what this machine can do. The traffic light turns green; you punch the accelerator, the back of your head hits the headrest.

A few blinks later, you're whirring down the highway, at the speed limit, of course.

Driving the all-electric Tesla Roadster is a little surreal. It's quieter than a refrigerator, but it shoots to 60 mph in less than four seconds. No shifting gears, just one nonstop surge of speed. All this power from a bunch of laptop batteries in the back?

So far, Tesla has sold about 500 Roadsters at more than $101,000 a pop, including two in the Charleston area. Tony Bakker, founder of software-maker Blackbaud, picked one up a few months ago. "I do not think electric cars are a novelty," he said.

Bakker and a growing number of electric-car proponents believe that concerns about global climate change and foreign control of the oil supply are fueling a sustained movement toward electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids.

"I think the electric-vehicle industry has the potential to grow much like other high-tech industries have in recent decades," Bakker said, adding that early cell phone batteries "barely fit in a brief case" and now slip easily into a pocket.

Big bucks are at stake. Nearly all of the world's major automakers are working on electric cars and plug-in hybrids, vehicles that use small gasoline engines to recharge batteries when they run low.

This year, the Energy Department set aside a $25 billion fund for the development of new fuel-efficient vehicles.

"The good news is that electric vehicles, or I call them plug-ins, are a reality," said Jim Poch, head of Plug In Carolina, a nonprofit on Daniel Island funded largely by electric utilities.

"The challenge is speed of deployment. I think during the next year you'll see them trickle into the market, probably with high price tags and low production numbers." Within 10 to 20 years, however, he said electric vehicles should be commonplace.

The race to land electric vehicle and battery factories already has begun. Two weeks ago, a South Korean company, CT&T Company Ltd., revealed that South Carolina is one of five states it is studying for an electric-vehicle plant that would employ 2,600 people. The company reportedly is looking at locations in the Upstate and plans to make a decision by September.

Past efforts to make electric cars and plug-in hybrids commercially viable foundered, partly because of low gas prices and problems with batteries. And some analysts say these factors still make plug-in vehicles unattractive to many consumers.

But Poch said automakers are poised in the next three years to introduce new cars that could be game-changers. Next year GM will launch its Volt, an electric car with a gasoline engine that re-charges its batteries. Auto experts predict the price tag will be about $40,000.

Nissan also plans to sell an electric car next year, and ramp up quickly after that. The company recently announced that it had made advances in battery technology that one official said allows "us to go to mass market."

With a $1.6 billion federal loan in hand, the company said it will build a new lithium-ion battery factory in Tennessee and crank out as many as 150,000 electric cars a year by 2012.

And Toyota, which built the first mass-produced hybrid, said it will produce 20,000 to 30,000 plug-in versions of its Prius within three years.

Poch said he sometimes wonders why Toyota waited so long. He paid about $10,400 to a company, Hymotion, to convert his Prius into a plug-in that boosted the car's fuel consumption to nearly 100 miles per gallon.

The conversion, he said, shows how easy it is to create high-mileage plug-in vehicles using existing technology.

Power companies could be big winners in a shift from the internal-combustion engine to electric motors, Poch said. "I think people are going to feel better knowing that their money is going to a SCANA or Santee Cooper or local utility instead of Hugo Chavez or a foreign dictator."

Electric cars aren't emission-free if they get their juice from coal-fired power plants. But Poch said electric cars pollute less because they're more efficient. Also, as utilities add more renewable power to their generation mix, the electric grid will become cleaner.

Several years ago, some researchers and government officials, including the Bush administration, pushed hydrogen fuel cells as the vehicle propulsion technology of the future.

South Carolina development officials and universities formed an alliance in 2006 to promote hydrogen fuel cell research. But earlier this year, the Energy Department cut funding for some hydrogen-related projects in favor of electric vehicle and other technologies.

"We asked ourselves, 'Is it likely in the next 10 or 15, 20 years that we will convert to a hydrogen car economy?' " Energy Secretary Steven Chu said in a briefing last May. "The answer, we felt, was 'no.' "

But it's by no means a given that electric cars will be the norm instead of the exception, some experts say. The energy stored and generated by batteries still doesn't measure up to the energy in gasoline, said Paul Venhovens, a professor and BMW Endowed Chair in Systems Integration at Clemson University.

Another challenge: Batteries work best between temperatures of 77 and 95 degrees. At extremely cold temperatures, "a pure electric vehicle might not work," he said.

"There will definitely be a future for hybrid and electric vehicles. However, there will be many other technologies competing with them, and I don't see a clear winner in the next 10 years."

Still, some say the internal combustion engine's time has passed. "It pollutes the air, has hundreds of moving parts, has high maintenance costs and runs on oil which comes predominantly from countries that do not like us," said Bakker, adding that he bought his Tesla after watching the documentary, "Who Killed the Electric Car?"

The documentary showed how General Motors scrapped its electric car program in the 1990s, a move that GM's ex-CEO, Rick Wagoner, would later say was one of the biggest mistakes of his career.

Bakker said he's not a big car buff. "A car to me is just a means to get from A to B." But when he learned that fellow software entrepreneur Elon Musk formed Tesla to build electric cars, "I felt the least I could do was support his effort by buying one."

It's an eye-catching car, for sure. It's built on a Lotus frame, but it's what you don't see that makes it different. The electric motor is in the front, and the lithium ion battery packs — similar to what you'll find in your laptop — are in the back. Its range is about 200 miles, and it recharges in 3.5 hours.

Today's luxuries often become tomorrow's necessities, and Bakker said he thinks this phenomenon eventually will make electric cars mainstream. In the meantime, he enjoys owning a sleek car that turns a few heads and makes people think.

"Most people are amazed at how quiet it is," he said. "It's not much louder than a golf cart when cruising around. My personal favorite is when I challenge an onlooker to find the exhaust pipe — because the car doesn't have one."

Reach Tony Bartelme at 937-5554 or tbartelme@postandcourier.com.