Project Better Place is the best idea so far to make electric cars work, and I believe it can. There has been much buzz about it lately. Wired magazine had a cover-story on it a few months ago.
Essentially the idea boils down to having all electric cars, that when going to a re-"fueling" station, instead of sitting there and waiting for the battery to charge, pre-charged batteries from the station are simply switched out with the one in your car. In this case, you don't really "own" the battery, although you do, because you would switch them out with pre-charged different ones all the time.
As quoted from Wikipedia (and backed up from the Wired article I read), "Better Place will build its first
electric vehicle networks in
Denmark,
Israel and
Australia[1] where the electricity will be generated by
renewable energy." They've already made a deal with the automaker Renault who will be building the electric cars.
The range of the car is about 110 miles on one battery, but the distance you can drive would only be limited by the battery station infrastructure.
It's the best idea I've heard to actually make electric cars viable.