The Core

This is something I've really been wanting to get, most of my driving is less than 15 miles.  Used highway legal electric cars seem to go for about $10k and up right now in my area.

Yeah, that's probably what I'll do.  I am sure they'll continue to drop as new models come out.

For electric cars in the US, where distances are larger: price has to come down, driving range has to come up, charge time has to decrease.  There is a niche: US North East, commuter cars, cities that might introduce carbon taxes like London has.

Also design: right now most of the electric vehicles are over wind-tunneled to maximize range, but that eliminates a large segment of the population that is either tall or overweight or both and won't/can't jack-knife themselves into something like a Prius.  (There are a lot of reasons Americans buy so many full sized pickup trucks and part of the reason is because we fit in them better than most of the modern cars being cloned.)

Hydrogen fuel cells make more sense as a long term replacement for internal combustion but the technology and commitment to the infrastructure are not there yet.

Long term, both are coming and will exist side by side. 

I read somewhere that there only is lithium enough on the planet to power half the amount of cars in the world. Technically it may be cheaper to produce electric cars, but if they don't find a way to mass produce batteries based on a less  scarce resource, I would say that there is a serious supply and demand issue.

But haven't we been hearing about the idea that electric cars will take over for years now? 10 years ago I remember some blogger was 'guaranteeing' that the majority of cars on the road in 2016 would be electric

I remember buying a car in 2004 when gas prices in our area tipped over $5/gal and SUV sales were crashing and it seemed like all the incentives were lining up for serious innovation.

I told simplytheresa "This could be the last internal combustion engine car we buy." Until lately, I've been feeling we're barely closer than we were in 2004 and for the reasons Brad mentioned, in a snowy, rural area like ours, we still feel far away from electric. Of course, climate change seems to be fixing the snow problem.

The one thing about all of these predictions like the one you mention, is they are almost all farcical. The median age of a car on the road in the US today is over 11 years and that number is generally rising. This means that if we quit producing ICE cars right now, 10 years from now the majority of cars on the road would still be ICE cars unless there was a strong incentive to trade in. If the cost savings were there, that incentive might exist, but it would still take time.

If someone tells me that 10 years from now, the majority of cars sold will be electric, I would say "could be so." If someone tells me that 10 years from now the majority of the cars on the road will be electric or self-driving, I know they're full of sh##.

I read somewhere that there only is lithium enough on the planet to power half the amount of cars in the world.

It's not just the lithium, but a lot of the other rare earth minerals that are used in electric car production that are also in short supply. It just doesn't seem possible for the market to be able manufacture all of these things. Then, as mentioned the lack of infrastructure is going to push the manufacturers to look at more realistic models like hybrids and even hydrogen before pure electric.