Can the world economy recover with rising oil prices?

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Squilliam said:

The battery technology is improving extremely rapidly. They can be charged a lot faster now than they were several years ago. You're from the U.S. right? Since a lot of people have more than one vehicle it would be extremely practical for them to offer an electric only vehicle for people to use within a set radius for their daily commute etc. So long as the price remains within reach of a comparable gas powered vehicle as people tend to purchase their vehicles on finance they can appreciate a lower running/servicing cost of a purely electric vehicle as it would probably save them money on the longer term. Its not the solution for everyone and hybrid plug in vehicles may be the way to go for at least as many people but long term the market will probably satisfy everyones different needs.

Haha but yes I can see your pain when it comes to public debate. Im lucky that I live in a country with 70%+ renewable electricity production. We're having a big push for wind power with dozens of sites coming online between now and 2010 which should help us rid ourselves of dependency on fossil fuels. Personally the reason why im so for electric cars is because my country can produce so much renewable electricity already. In America they have a tonne of space available for Solar and Wind power its insane, especially in places like Texas/Arizona/California and even things like the Geothermal capacity is underutilised from what I can see.

It is my bad english that makes you think i'm from US, i believe.

I have two cars, and frankly, wouldn't mind if the other would be electric. It would save me a lot of money.
Most families have only one car, when electric cars aren't a real option. The idea in the hybrids would be to be able to travel the same distance as you can travel with a car with combustion engine, but also have the benefits of electric vehicle. But, yeah, at the moment (affordable) battery tech is the biggest problem.

USA could produce all the energy it needs geothermally in Yellowstone, i believe.

Reneweables and solar power is good to use where available, but since the discussion is mostly political, we are ending up in a situation, where solar power should be put where sun don't shine and wind generators where there's no wind, causing the increase in coal power (although Germany is ramming the CO2 back to ground) with heavy goverment funding only because it fits someones political agenda. A lot of the countries have some form of renewable source that could (at least partially) replace fossil fuels. For example, we have lots of turf, that could be made into gasoline with Fischer-Tropsch process.