It ran into the problem that (rationally) people do do road trips to a certain amount and (irrationally) the whole reason people like cars is you can just get in your car anytime and go anywhere and if you wanted just to go where someone else decides when they decide you can go you can always... ride the bus.

For a long term the go-to-market picture people had for EVs was that they were going to start out as short range vehicles that were just marginally acceptable to people, we know now that Tesla's decision to position them as premium vehicles [1] rather than glorified golf carts was key to getting them accepted.

A counter though is that many families have multiple vehicles and if you have one gas car whoever needs to go a long distance can take the gas car and the others can drive a Nissan LEAF or something.

[1] ... look at how many automakers wish they could sell cars at a premium price but don't really have a differentiated product.