The producers of "Who Killed the Electric Car" claim that corporate greed was largely responsible for its death.  GM claimed that the vehicles could not be produced at a low enough cost to be profitable.  Skip forward a decade.  GM is on the verge of bankruptcy spending heavily on an electric car, the Volt, and the government is aiding in its bailout.  The Obama administration gathered a task force to review the performance of the companies and their proposed strategic plans for renewal.  In their "Determination of Viability Summary" for General Motors, the task force describes the financial prospects of the Volt,

Product mix: GM earns a large share of its profits from high-margin trucks and SUVs, which are vulnerable to a continuing shift in consumer preference to smaller vehicles. Additionally, while the Chevy Volt holds promise, it will likely be too expensive to be commercially successful in the short-term...

GM is at least one generation behind Toyota on advanced, “green” powertrain development. In an attempt to leapfrog Toyota, GM has devoted significant resources to the Chevy Volt. While the Volt holds promise, it is currently projected to be much more expensive than its gasoline-fueled peers and will likely need substantial reductions in manufacturing cost in order to become commercially viable.

Well, maybe, just maybe, GM was telling the truth and the electric car was just not economically viable.  My fears are that the Volt and other "fuel efficient" cars will become "viable" at the taxpayers' expense, and I am a taxpayer.  The first paragraph notes that even now a large share of GM's revenues come from trucks and SUVs.  As limited by demand elasticity, the government use CAFE standards to force auto manufacturers to increase prices on profitable, gas guzzling models to lower prices on cars consumers would otherwise avoid.  But constraining profits by forcing commercially successful vehicles to subsidize commercially nonviable vehicles will cost taxpayers. 

Environmentalists need not worry.  The Obama administration is not constrained by market demand.  Jeff Green and John Hughes, writing for Bloomberg in "GM’s Volt Electric Said Still in Plans After Obama Orders Cuts," quote Jeff Smith, an alternative energy analyst at the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Michigan, who states,

The reality is, the Volt doesn’t make sense economically in the short term, and it’s been made very clear that everything is on the table right now...But the Obama administration has put such a high priority on the electrification of the vehicle that it would be a very difficult policy decision to drop the Volt.

They also quote Rob Peterson, a GM spokesman, who said,

This thing is full steam ahead, nothing has changed. GM has asked the U.S. Department of Energy for $10.3 billion in funds to develop advanced- technology vehicles with better fuel economy.

Even if carbon emissions will produce catastrophic global warming that endangers human civilization, and reduced oil consumption improves national security by freeing military resources from the Middle East, subsidizing the manufacture of an electric car or imposing higher CAFE standards is much less efficient than increasing taxes on oil-based products.