Of course if you only need extra range some of the time, and if you happen to live within reasonable distance of a rental place, and if you can plan these things enough in advance, the issue of range is less important. But I can see how even rare occasions could sour a buyer if they occur by surprise or in emergencies.
If you have a low range car that suffices most of the time, which is to say you can commute within the range if you recharge it overnight, that's fine until someone needs to go to the hospital in the middle of the night, or the power goes off for the day - things that may happen only a couple of times a year, but when they do, a discharged car will let you down in a hurry.
It also ought to be pointed out that renting a car can be pretty expensive. I went off visiting for a week, and it cost something around $500 to rent a tiny little three cylinder mini-compact. That's a fair chunk of change for a car that would be painful to take on any extended excursion. If you have more than one car, of course, one could be electric and another, in reserve, not. But if you have only one car, the limitations of range and convenience grow. If you own no car at all, rental can be a viable option, but it seems less so if you must rent a car and leave the one you own at home (or drive it to the rental lot, where it may or may not get enough charge to take you back home).
I can easily see how at least some early adopters would find that contingencies became too complicated, and might decide to abandon the project, at least for a while.
I still think there is plenty of room for plenty of electric adoption, and that there are many good reasons for going electric, and that we need very much to avoid an all-or-nothing attitude, as if we shouldn't think hard about it until everyone can get on board. But I also think that for many (Joe Morgue being a conspicuous example) it isn't time, and likely will not be for some time to come.
I'm somewhere between, I guess. As a multi-vehicle owner, I could likely replace the most used little econobox with an electric, saving my wife's SUV and my truck for when that can't be used. But infrastructure here is still a little weak, and at my own homesite, solar power is difficult owing to geography and distance (I'd have to run a long line between the best solar site and the best outlet site), and I have only a 100 amp electric service including the drop line, which is probably not adequate for any but the slowest charging. Some day, one of those problems will probably be corrected, but not today.
