All of this rhetoric is completely besides the point as several studies show. Even in West Virginia, the most coal-heavy energy market in America, pure electric vehicles today produce less greenhouse gases than the average gasoline vehicle due to the efficiency of electric motors and the use of surplus offpeak energy. In almost all markets, it beats a Toyota Prius.
Shrug. Now we've moved from "good for the environment" to between better than an average American car (i.e. appalling) and about as good as a hybrid vehicle[0]. Which really isn't all that exiting. Again, you'd be doing something good by driving less; but that's typically not what people do next after buying a sports car.
No environmental strategy that asks people to make do with less is ever going to win. Take a look at what's happening in the BRIC countries and then try to tell me it's going to work.
People want more and will figure out how to get more. It's doing that sustainably that will save us. Kind of the whole point of the Tesla S.
If you read my comment and understood it fully, you'd notice that in most states, a pure electric vehicle is NOT "about as good as a hybrid vehicle", but cleaner than the cleanest hybrid. Electric vehicles are also getting cleaner with the electric grid while non-plugin hybrids have made no progress in over a decade.
Keep in mind that producing one gallon of gasoline uses more electricity than it takes to drive the same distance in an electric car as that gallon would take you in a gas car.