What if you had Edison or Tesla invent a better battery? That solves a lot of the problem about the constraints of the range of the electric car. I would imagine Edison has substantial reason to do so, because a better battery make direct current more feasible.
Even with the EV-1 that GM rolled out in the late 90's required hours of recharge time, so I think that night-time recharge at the owner's home is probably going to be the way these cars are recharged.
Even if this happens, it seems to me that a battery - centric engine is liable to be harder to maintain and more expensive to maintain than a gasoline one. I may be wrong: a good battery system has the potential to reduce the number of moving parts in the car itself. I wonder if you could even see something like the logistical dynamics of inkjet printers: most of the mechanics of the printer are really in the nozzles of the cartridge. This solves the problem that they would degrade over time but also means that John Q. Consumer has to keep buying more of them on a regular basis. I'm not mechanically savvy enough to figure it out, but if you could get the battery to perform the same basic function, then you have the same effect. Indeed, car companies would love this because not only do they get to sell you a high cost durable good, they get to keep selling you a capital intensive replacement part.
Without all those moving parts, your going to end up really reducing how much stuff you'll need to maintain a car. Since that is a major revenue producer for the car companies, the fact that the car company and the power company are owned by the same corporate entity is going to be a plus.
When did oil become the primary fuel for ocean going ships, btw? Is there any benefit to having oil / coal power an electrical generator which in turn powers a ship's motor? I know disel subs work like that, but only because of the exhaust. I'm wondering if there might be a gain in response time: electric cars today usually have terrific acceleration because the application of speed is nearly instantaneous. There's still probably some inertia involved in turning a Dreadnought's screws, but I wonder if there's some room for improvement. I'd have to imagine it depends on the gain in speed / acceleration (relative to the need to move through the water and the effect of the intertia on the ship itself) and the increased amount of space and the efficiency of the power transfer.
Oil became the primary fuel prior to WWI. The reason that the switch was made from coal to oil is because you get twice as much energy yield from oil as you do from a comparable amount of coal.
I think the tipping point for both of these schemes hinges on the efficiencies of the batteries involved.
With the technology available is it possible to produce a battery that could get between 30 and 60 miles of travel off a battery? Is it reasonable that either Telsa or Edison could invent that kind of thing?