you're thinking of the General Electric EV1, which was, by all accounts, a fairly reasonable EV.
The only two problems with it, are the same two problems that every battery-powered-electric-vehicle faces: it cost FAR too much, and it's range was pitiful.
Case in point? GM were only able to lease around 800 of them. they couldn't sell them due to government regulations.
Furthermore, the car was available in two generations, the first used Lead-Acid batteries, the second used NiMH batteries instead.
Lead Acid Batteries have a Specific-Energy of only 30-40 Watt-hours per Kilogram (Wh/Kg), and NiMH batteries have a specific energy of up to 75Wh/Kg.
as a result of the poor energy-storage capabilities of those battery technologies, i quote this from Wikipedia:
"Cars with the lead-acid pack had a range of 80 to 100 miles, while the NiMH cars could travel between 100 and 140 miles between charges."
best case-scenario, 140 miles between charges? considering a charge takes hours, can you see why that's simply impossibly impractical? a conventional petrol or diesel powered vehicle have ranges upto and exceeding seven hundred miles, and then refueling only takes ten minutes if there's a queue to pay.
Battery technology hasn't advanced as far as you might think it has.
Even with highly-environmentally-destructive lithium batteries (the production-process for them is abhorrent), you might see 200Wh/Kg.
Assuming that an EV with the same efficiency as the EV1, with a Li-Poly battery-pack of the same mass was used, the range would only increase to about 370 miles, which will still require the many-hour-charge-cycle to refuel.
going to mention the "fast-charge-technology" that allows these newfangled lithium batteries to be recharged in 20 minutes? don't bother: they're technologically impressive but have three major drawbacks;
First: They require current-delivery-capabilities that most STREETS cannot accomodate, we're talking currents in the thousands of Amps range.
Second: They reduce the charge-efficiency of the charging process markedly - with regular charging, more than 80% of the energy you put into a lithium battery will be stored, with these "fast-charges", that drops to around 60% or less, depending on the speed. that's energy that's simply turned into heat.
Third: the fast-charge-cycles are incredibly damaging to the already fragile Lithium batteries, which generally have a cycle-lifetime of only 1000 charge-cycles before their usable capacity becomes too low to be useful.
with fast-charges, this can be as low as two hundred and fifty cycles.
Assuming a daily travel total of about 80 miles, that could easily see the battery needing to be replaced after just eighteen months. Isn't the whole point to save the environment?
