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Thanks to sites like Digg and Hugg, recently I’ve seen several stories regarding the possible return of the electric car, I thought it might be worth it to do a quick sanity check to see if these vehicles would actually be viable for most of us.

It seems to me that the most common knock against the electric car is the fact that most of them can only go 200 to 250 miles – which is more than a round trip from New York to Philadelphia – between charges.

While I don’t think that most of us drive more than 200 miles each day, I figured it was safer to ask than to just assume.

So on that note, I recently put up a poll on Daily Fuel Economy Tip, which asked, “How many miles do you drive on an average day?” and it appears that, on an an average day, an electric car would probably be able to fit our needs.

Here are the results of the poll:

45% of people drive 25 miles or less per day

23% of people drive between 26 and 50 miles per day

20% of people drive between 51 and 75 miles per day

7% of people drive between 76 and 100 miles per day

5% of people drive more than 100 miles per day

By the looks of it, it appears that roughly 95% of us would have no problem traveling under 100 miles per day, let alone 200 miles per day.

This sounds like a pretty compelling argument for electric cars for a couple of reasons, namely:

You probably wouldn’t have to worry about the infrastructure of setting up random “charging stations” because, for most people, they could make it through the day on one charge and simply recharge their car at night. Commuting to work is probably the largest factor in why most people drive so few miles each day. Last time I checked, if it’s just you (and maybe another passenger) you’re probably not going to need to drive a big sedan or SUV to get to work, and a smaller car would probably do just fine.

Hopefully the realization by both consumers and manufacturers that we really do most of our driving on a local level will help get electric cars and plug-in hybrids to the market that much quicker.