As we’ve talked about on these pages before, the battle for the hearts and minds of the next generation of car purchasers is starting. By the end of the year many major auto manufacturers will have some kind of electric vehicle for sale on the mass market and by 2014, nearly all major manufacturers have plans to introduce at least one electric car.

In these early stages, carmakers have chosen several different paths, some opting to go for the cars powered solely by batteries (Battery Electric Vehicles or BEVs) such as the Nissan LEAF, some for the plug-in hybrids (PHEVs; like a Prius with a bigger battery), and some for the extended range electric vehicles (EREVs with small generators on board to charge the batteries) such as the Chevy Volt.

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“Range anxiety” — the worry that your EV will run out juice before you get to where you’re going — is a term that has been bandied about a lot recently… almost annoyingly so. From a common sense standpoint, it seems only logical that range anxiety is a real phenomenon. But since we have so few EVs on the roads right now, the fact of the matter is that range anxiety is, at this point, a made up concept based on what we can logically expect.

And it’s this expectation that is spurring a huge amount of both private and public investment in nationwide charging networks for EVs — the assumption being that the only way EVs will ever become mass-accepted is to eliminate range anxiety.

But will those public charging stations that we’re dumping money into go unused because we have an expectation for a phenomenon that turns out to not really be an issue?

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Audi is continuing its aggressive push into the electric car marketspace by bringing its “e-tron” moniker to yet another model: the A2. What’s that you say, there’s an Audi A2? Well, yes, when it was originally produced in the early 2000’s the A2 (pictured above) was essentially a European market flop.

It was an oddly styled, underperforming mini-minivan that made extensive use of aluminum to save weight. But it was also a very fuel efficient vehicle: the 3-liter diesel version got nearly 80 miles per gallon (US) on the European cycle — making it the first vehicle to break the 3 liters per 100 kilometer mark.

And now Audi seems to think that the A2 was a flop because it was ahead of its time and they’re planning on bringing it back for the 2014 model year. Given the success of vehicles like the Mazda5 and the onslaught of what are essentially mini-minivans, perhaps Audi is right. Let’s just hope they make it look better this time around.

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