re: are there hard numbers on the pollution benifits of electric cars?
I'll bet, if we all put small grid-tie photovoltaic systems on our house rooftops, our electric energy consumption would drop significantly enough that any impact from electric vehicles would be easily offset.
Those systems now have come down tremendously in cost and could help us bridge the needs of the next few decades. I think it'd be in the best interest of the government to help homeowners buy and install these systems. For every dollar they spent on a program like that, you could probably reduce the military budget by 10 times that.
Art