Mar. 23--On a warm day with the top down, Steven Mortazavi was breezing along West River Drive when his eyes locked on the rearview mirror.

A Philly police car was on his tail. Mortazavi wasn't speeding, but the cop followed him into a parking lot, paused behind him, and then -- whew! -- moved on.

"He is so dying to give me a ticket," said Mortazavi, an Allentown pain-management physician.

It had to be the car: Bright red. Sleek and curvy. Built for speed, it can accelerate from zero to 60 in 3.9 seconds and top out at 125 miles an hour.

All on an electric motor.

And all for, oh, $109,000.

Mortazavi came to Philadelphia this month to test-drive a Tesla, the Silicon Valley sports car that may well be the first production electric car to not just get onto U.S. highways, but stay there.

The nation has been down this road before, as explored in the documentary Who Killed the Electric Car?

But now it's being reborn, in a dozen ways. Virtually every major auto manufacturer has a version in the pipeline.

Proponents see electric vehicles as a way to reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil while countering air pollution and climate change.

Energy experts also see them acting as an array of mini storage sites for electricity, with two-way plugs potentially able to feed energy back into the electrical grid during times of peak demand.

President Obama has said he wants to get a million plug-ins on the nation's roads by 2015. Thursday in California, he toured a U.S. Department of Energy electric car test site and announced $2.4 billion in federal funding for vehicle and battery manufacturing.

The cars can't really be called emission-free because they are powered by electric power plants that have emissions. But several studies have shown electric cars are cleaner than conventional gas-powered ones because there are more restrictions on industry's "long tailpipes" than on the short tailpipes of cars.

The most recent progression toward electric vehicles started with hybrids -- not electric per se, but close.

GM is on deck next, promising a plug-in hybrid called the Chevy Volt in 2010. The four-seater will cost up to $40,000 and will go 40 miles on a charge before a small gasoline engine kicks in to recharge the batteries.

At least seven others -- Saturn, Toyota, Chrysler, Ford, Audi, Hyundai, and Volkswagen -- have plug-in hybrids in the works.

Full-electric vehicles are promised from BMW, Nissan, Mitsubishi, and Chrysler, which is working on a minivan, a Jeep, and a sports car.

Most are due from 2010 to 2013, so prices have not yet been announced.