I have a sneaking suspicion that lawyers may have been involved in some of the decisions to pull EVs off the road. I personally feel that say a six car pileup at freeway speeds involving all electric vehicles using lead acid batteries might result in a situation that would make the Pinto look a little safer than Ralph Nader thinks.
As far as horses being zero emissions, not quite. Take your average city lot, put 2 horses on it (2 buggy family
) and I think you would end up with many of the same complaints that farmers get when suburbanites move into their new country homes. Country fresh air is not always so. There is a reason that every city I know of has bylaws restricting residents from having "farm animals" within the city limits.
biofuel can be made from many different waste products, we aren't limited to these fancy plants that have high oil yields. In fact in Guelph ON they have an experimental plant that makes sweet crude from waste feed products.