Yes, there probably won't be people willing to pay a much higher price for eco-friendly cars right off the bat – but that's because people are pretty reticent to spend their money on anything they feel they don't need, especially these days.

But it would be easy to market these sort of vehicles to all American consumers – just appeal to their sensibilities. Instead of telling people, “You'll be saving the world by buying gas-electric cars,” GM should be saying, “You'll be saving money in the long run by buying gas-electric cars.” Put a big chart up showing how much it costs to go one mile in a Volt versus a Camry, and people will start buying them.

As for the performance question, yeah, most of us enthusiasts probably won't be racing out to snap up the first electric cars off the line. But Tesla's made it very clear that just because a car runs on electrons doesn't mean it's boring – or slow. Give it a few years for batteries to become smaller and more efficient, and in a decade or two, electric-powered Camaros will probably be ripping off quarter-mile times quicker than today's SS.

What Lutz is doing simply alienates everyone – it makes people on the coasts look like arrogant snobs who don't understand “real Americans,” and it makes those “real Americans” look like brain-damaged rednecks incapable of understanding science or logic. When in reality, we're all probably somewhere in the middle.