And that expense inhibited the Volt’s success. It’s one thing if a battery-powered car doesn’t take you that far, since you can run on gas after the battery gives out. It’s another when the inclusion of a not-very-effective battery boosts the price of the vehicle so much that no one wants to buy it. So for several years, electric cars suffered in comparison with electronic products like mobile phones and computers, which benefited from Moore’s law—the notion that the processing power of computers doubles every two years. That’s why we’ve seen incredible simultaneous improvements in both price and quality for electronic devices like phones and laptops. Every version is both better and cheaper than the previous.