It is unlikely you have ever heard of Tomohiko Kawanabe. But if you are interested in cars, and particularly the future of electric cars, it might be useful to listen to what he has to say.

The media and assorted environmentalists and green technology types seem eager to assure us that the “future is now” for electric vehicles, or EVs. We are told that people are lining up to order Nissan’s attractive electric four-door Leaf, that anticipation is high for General Motors’ Chevrolet Volt, that the Tesla roadster (even at $100,000 each) is a sports car dream and that other pure battery cars like Mitsubishi’s i-MiEV are ready in the pipeline. Nissan’s CEO, Carlos Ghosn, expects his company to have the capacity to build half a million electric cars a year by 2012. He and some other EV advocates predict that one out of every ten cars sold by the end of this decade will be battery-powered.

Kawanabe begs to differ.

He is the chief of research and development for Honda Motor Co., a company with a reputation for staying on the technological edge of the automobile. Honda has been seriously working on electric cars since 1988. It gained a lot of real-world knowledge about electrics from feedback on the more than 300 EV Plus nickel-metal hydride battery-powered cars it leased in the United States between 1997 and 2000. Last fall it introduced an electric “concept car,” the EV-N, to show that it is still keeping its hand in the game.

Kawanabe is not saying anything new, but he is saying something that is either ignored or has yet to sink in with electric enthusiasts. Electric cars—including the very best of them—don’t go very far.

What Honda knows about electric cars is considerable. But what Honda, as one of the world’s leading manufacturers, knows about the car business is even more considerable. And as to the electric part of that business, Kawanabe says “We lack confidence” in it.

“We are definitely conducting research on electric cars,” he recently told Bloomberg News, “but I can’t say I wholeheartedly recommend them.”

Why? As a leading engineer for the builder of some of the world’s most popular cars, Kawanabe’s answer is right to the point. “It is questionable whether consumers will accept the annoyances of limited driving range and having to spend time charging them.”

Kawanabe is not saying anything new, but he is saying something that is either ignored or has yet to sink in with electric enthusiasts. EVs—including the very best of them—don’t go very far. They go even less far if they go fast. They go even less far if they contain passengers or any significant cargo. Or if it is very cold. Or if it is very hot.

And, investment in charging infrastructure aside, the laws of physics seem, thus far, to be less than accommodating about the dream of a “quick” battery charge that comes anywhere close to the few minutes it takes to fill a gas tank.

Despite the hundreds of millions of dollars being spent on research, despite the many and ingenious forays into battery chemistry, the great breakthrough that has been hoped for remains just around this corner and over that horizon.

Battery researchers continue to juggle the qualities—safety, durability, reliable performance, and cost—that, once brought into balance, would constitute the “ideal” battery. Currently their best bet centers on lithium-ion batteries, which have been so successful in powering personal computers. But scaling them up for the demands of an automobile have proved devilishly difficult. For instance, the power of these batteries could be dramatically increased, but durability, safety, and cost would be compromised. Ambient temperature (especially in hot climates like Florida or Arizona) can affect them. And then there is the problem of the calendar life of L-ion batteries. Their performance begins to slowly degrade from the time of manufacture. Experts say it is still not clear if even the most sophisticated L-ion battery packs can live up to their six- to ten-year life-cycle claims.

Despite the hundreds of millions of dollars being spent on research, despite the many and ingenious forays into battery chemistry, engineering, and technology, the great battery breakthrough that has been hoped for remains just around this corner and over that horizon. That’s one of the big reasons, despite the optimism of Ghosn and others, industry analysts generally predict only a 1 or 2 percent market penetration for EVs by 2020.

Honda is covering some numbers on the electric table, but it is betting its big money on improving its gas-electric hybrids and in wringing ever more efficiency out of its gasoline engines.

Make no mistake, a tremendous amount of money and brainpower is being spent on the battery breakthrough and it seems so tantalizingly close that EV ventures continue to attract private investment as well as a lot of government money. Toyota, for instance, which has heretofore concentrated on its highly successful hybrid electrics instead of EVs, made a dramatic announcement this past week that it will partner with Tesla Motors in a venture that will eventually build Tesla’s expensive roadster and its follow-on (and more affordable) S sedan at a former Toyota plant near San Francisco. It will be interesting to see if Toyota’s huge scale, supplier pipeline, deep engineering bench, and marketing skill, combined with Tesla’s technological boldness (all of this helped by $465 million in federal loans and $20 million in California state tax abatements) can advance EV development.

Meanwhile, Honda is covering some numbers on the electric table, but it is betting its big money on improving its gas-electric hybrids, like the new Insight and Civic, and in wringing ever more efficiency out of its gasoline engines. My guess is that by 2020 gasoline engines will be routinely delivering 35- to 40- plus miles per gallon on medium to large cars.

Electric cars go even less far if they go fast. They go even less far if they contain passengers or any significant cargo. Or if it is very cold. Or if it is very hot.

I have always been fascinated by the concept of pure electric cars, but I have a record of skepticism about when, if ever, they will play a major role in personal transportation. I am weary of hearing how this or that electric car can accelerate from 0 to 60 in fewer seconds than there are fingers on my hand, because I know how profoundly such acceleration draws down the battery pack. I just can’t get gushy about the fact that a Nissan Leaf with a driver and perhaps one really skinny passenger has a 100-mile range on a fully charged battery on a perfectly flat road on a perfect day that’s not too hot or too cold.

Kawanabe’s words will cause a furor, no doubt, among those enthusiasts who insist that, since the average American drives less than 30 miles a day, range should not be an issue when buying a fairly expensive car with mediocre overall performance and a significant time lag before it can be driven again. Too many EV advocates keep whistling past the battery graveyard, so it is refreshing to hear that someone with solid credentials among the major carmakers has dared to temper the electric exuberance.

Ralph Kinney Bennett writes the Automobility column for THE AMERICAN.

FURTHER READING: Bennett recently memorialized “The Elegant Jeep,” discussed the American love affair with trucks in “Truckin,’” commemorated “The Passing of Pontiac,” and explained how the compact car revolution began in “Small Car, Big Shadow.”

Image by Darren Wamboldt/Bergman Group.