A fairly comprehensive article on the marketing of electric cars:
Selling the Electric Car - AdWeek
Reading this article reminded me of this graph:
Selling the Electric Car - AdWeek
...with rollouts just around the corner, automakers concede that they and their agencies face a substantial hurdle: changing the consumer perception that electric cars are more trouble than they're worth. Issues include "range" anxiety -- the fear batteries will run out before drivers reach home due to a virtually nonexistent charging infrastructure -- to higher price points and the need to learn about the various options in the new category.
"The threat to any new technology is that 'c' word: 'compromise,'" says Mark Turner, chief strategy officer of Saatchi & Saatchi in Torrance, Calif., which handles advertising for Toyota, which plans to roll out a plug-in Prius next year. "The U.S. consumer is especially loathe to compromise," he adds. "It's not in our DNA. ... If I look at the electric vehicles offered in the near future, my gut tells me many consumers may [indeed] view them as a compromise. It's a functionality and price issue. At the moment, it's easy to own a car with a conventional gas engine."
...
[Mark Perry, director of product planning at Nissan North America] predicts, however, that the early adopters, at least, will come fairly easily. "They're waiting for this and are saying, 'What took you so long?'" he says. (He estimates that Nissan has 20,000 initial orders for the car.)
Reading this article reminded me of this graph: