After more than a century of America’s dependency on foreign and national oil to power millions of automobiles, there is finally an end in sight. While it looked like hydrogen was the solution to these energy woes, electric cars are seeing a great resurgence in the market. Starting in less than a year Auto shipping companies will begin shipping cars that run on batteries rather than fossil fuels, to dealerships near you.

GM produced an electric car in the mid 90’s, later "killing" it for a host of reasons, despite many people’s protests. While the GM EV-1 may be dead, the Toyota Prius has been a major success since it first came out, receiving a huge amount of press and attention from celebrities. The Toyota Prius only solves the problem halfway though; it was the first gasoline-electric hybrid, meaning that it still uses gasoline for a lot of the driving, albeit far less than most cars.

Next year, all this will change, with an increasing number of all electric cars coming to the market. These range from ad-on batteries for the Prius to drive farther with just electricity to the publicized Chevrolet Volt. Being at the beginning of a new era in car transport has its flaws: many of these cars have limited batteries, giving them varied but somewhat small ranges. In addition, although they may not be polluting the environment while driving, they do in other ways. First the nickel cadmium, or other batteries used in these vehicles are notoriously extremely pollutant to create and destroy. And second, the energy used by these cars, is not guaranteed to be pure; it may have come from any sort of fossil fuel burning power plant. As these cars progress, it is clear that these problems will resolve themselves with new technologies, and a push for cleaner energies in power plants, like wind or solar.

For now though, researchers have said that the electrical grid will be capable of sustaining the charging of thousands of electrical cars. The industry has already dealt with demands from millions of large electronics like plasma televisions. So while rechargeable cars may take up the same amount of electricity as four plasma televisions, the grid can surely handle it. Most people will not be happy to see their electricity bill sky rocket, but since the price nowhere near approaches the price of gas, this is largely insignificant. Let’s just hope the electric car does not suffer a similar fate as it did two years ago.