It is already installing recharging points in Israel, where it hopes to have 100,000 in place by 2010 and 500,000 by 2011, along with 100 battery-swapping stations.Electric cars' inherent drawbacks, says Mr Agassi, will not vanish soon: batteries are expensive, and they cannot be charged in the time it takes to fill a tank unless there is a power station next to each charging point.
Once within the front pack Alonso was able to exploit the car's inherent speed around the Marina Bay circuit, which had been apparent when he set the fastest time in two of the weekend's practice sessions.
That said, proper winter tires can largely make up for a rear-wheel-drive car's inherent disadvantages.
Meanwhile, Red Bull have been campaigning hard - unsuccessfully so far - for Pirelli to produce more durable tyres, believing that the inherent superiority of their car is being held back by them being unable to exploit its full potential in races as a result of needing to look after the tyres.
In that way, Mercedes' victory was remarkably similar to many of those scored by Vettel in a Red Bull between 2011 and 2013, when the car's inherent superiority was shackled by the deliberate fragility of the tyres on which it was forced to race.
"A two-year extension does not solve the inherent problem that combining cars and trucks together, and then raising them by 50percentthreatensens the existence of S.U.V.'s, minivans and pickup trucks as we know them today," Stuart Schorr, a spokesman for DaimlerChrysler in Washington, said in an e-mail message.
Consumers found it chock-full of fancy electronics they did not want, and thus overpriced; a cheaper, basic version is now being rushed out.As long as Fiat dominated the Italian market, thanks in part to a batch of now-dismantled protectionist measures designed to exclude Japanese cars, its inherent weaknesses were overlooked.
But Red Bull have proved they can get around those and benefit from the inherent superior performance of the car that a no-compromise approach brings.
In Malaysia, there are fast corners where the car has enough inherent downforce to enable the driver to run with the DRS open if the set-up is right.
