With the 2014 Chevy Spark EV, the long march plugs in

I can't tell you how much General Motors wants to charge for a 2014 Chevy Spark EV, the first all-electric vehicle GM has sold in the United States since the ill-fated EV1. I'm not sure how far it goes, or how well it drives at highway speeds, even after two days of peppering GM executives with questions. In any other car, I'd say this shows a lack of confidence in an all-new model. but for the Spark and its ilk, such worries may be misplaced. Electric vehicles are coming whether they -- or customers -- are ready or not.

Thanks to environmental rules in California major U.S. automakers will need to sell 60,000 zero-emission cars a year by 2014, with the targets rising steadily to 1.4 million by 2025. Those rules are followed by 11 other states; European governments and China have even tougher targets in mind. The result: a brace of small models converted to run on batteries aimed at California buyers, including electron-powered versions of the Honda Fit, Toyota RAV4 and Ford Focus.

All of these vehicles share a few things in common; they have a much smaller range than their gasoline-fueled editions, and they cost at least $10,000 more. In the case of the Honda Fit and Toyota RAV4, the automakers will not sell the vehicles outright, offering only a handful under lease. It sounds like the worst kind of bureaucratic overreach, where government planners arm-twist an industry to build products at a loss for customers who don't want them.

And yet: The only viable path away from burning compressed liquified dinosaurs for energy runs toward an electric future. The two dozen GM executives gathered in San Francisco say the Spark is a car they're proud to stand behind, and one they claim was meant to do more than, in the words of GM product chief Mary Barra, "check a regulatory box." Relying on many pieces from the Chevy Volt, along with new battery designs and some refinements, the Spark stakes out what a modern electric car can do -- and where it still has to improve.