Electric cars have been a long time coming. The elephant-at-the-car-show sized barriers to adoption have been poor range and high cost, but media darling Tesla Motors seems to have a bead on bringing both into the "acceptable" range for PC celebs who've tired of putting around the LA basin in their Priuses. No question about it: the Tesla rocks, and goes like hell to boot.

Another recent credible entrant into the Combustion-less Car Sweepstakes is Swedish supercar maker Koenigsegg and its partner NLV Solar AG, who introduced a novel Solar-Electric concept car at the 2009 Geneva Auto Salon. Dubbed the Quant, the four-seater boasts advances in electric power generation and storage (not the least of which is invisible, thin-film photovoltaic coating covering the body of the car) that purportedly enables charging the FAES (Flow AccumulatorEnergy Storage) to full capacity in 20 minutes and gives the vehicle a range of 500 kilometres. While an expected 0-100 km/h time of 5.2 seconds is about a second slower than real-world Tesla tests, and is snail-like compared to the current Koenigsegg lineup, NLV's technology in a lightweight, Quant-style wrapper may be what the planet needs to purge itself of the current performance car mindset.

Ahh, life without a reciprocating mass powerplant should be so sweet.

For more detailed info, check out http://www.koenigsegg.com/pressreleases.php?view=16.