Electric Cars--first thoughts

My reading so far has lead to a number of insights about electric cars.  Most significantly, I've learned about the history of the electric car, and this history might hold some ideas for the present and future of such cars.  I sort of assumed that the electric car was a new invention, the product of recent concerns for the environment or possibly a response to the (1970s) oil crisis.  Turns out that the electric car pre-dated the gasoline car.  Many of the first cars (1880s or so) were electric, and the technology and infrastructure around these cars was pretty impressive.  The demise of these cars was due to the cheap availability of gasoline, the fact that gas-powered cars could go faster than electric powered-cars (and why was this so important?), and the fact that the oil companies held huge political and economic clout.  Big surprise.

The infrastructure surrounding these early electric cars involve a system for swapping out batteries rather than plugging the cars into a direct power source.  I suspect that this limited the power of the batteries (since it would be impossible to lift out a huge, heavy battery).  I also wonder how much charge such batteries could hold.  I've requested a book from the BPL to learn more about this.  All current electric car models (Chevy Volt, Nissan Leaf, etc.) use batteries that remain in the car and that are charged, and this solves the size and power issue but raises another problem: the need to create a (national?) network of charging stations.  [I've found a site that describes a small network of such stations in Southern California and Arizona; I need to find out how this works.]

I'm wondering if there are insights to be gleaned from examining the early history of the electric car, lessons that might be useful for current thinking about these cars.

I'm also curious about the current capacities of these cars.  Most that I've seen on the web are tiny, boxy cars that look more like kit-cars than comfortable, consumer options.  I seem to recall that a city in Japan was using them in a wide-spread way, but I've not found out about this yet.

I've also been reading that there are huge advances in battery technology recently.  I wonder how promising this is.  Recently, Congress tried to cut funding for electric car research.  Will the powerful Oil lobby stall development of electric car technology?  Again, looking at developments in other countries (Japan, for sure, but perhaps other places as well) might offer some sense of a possible future.