The car is not particularly attractive, and not even its name sounds overly appealing. The “i MiEV” is Japanese carmaker Mitsubishi Motors’ new egg-shaped, subcompact car, and the company hopes it will ring in a new era in automobile manufacturing when it becomes available this summer.

The name is an abbreviation for “Mitsubishi innovative Electric Vehicle.” It runs on nothing but electricity, but the car’s most salient feature is its speed.

Judging by Mitsubishi’s technical specifications, at least, the car is impressive with a top speed of 130 kilometers per hour (81 mph), a range of 160 kilometers (100 miles) on one battery charge and a charging time of only 30 minutes when plugged into a high-voltage current outlet.

Is this what the great white hope of the auto industry looks like, and could this be a way out of the doldrums brought on by the current global economic heart attack?

Probably not. Electric cars are all the rage this week at the Geneva Auto Show, but automakers seem to be at a loss for a real solution to their most pressing economic problems.

“There is no royal road out of the malaise,” said Nick Margetts, an expert at Jato Dynamics, an automotive data research firm. “That’s why most carmakers have settled for the tried and true.”

VW is introducing the fifth generation of its popular Polo model, Mercedes is placing its hopes on the new E-Class of luxury car and Ford is introducing a new high-powered version of the Focus RS.

And Opel? Germany’s venerable and embattled carmaker has chosen to ignore the present and look two years ahead, to 2011, when it promises to debut its new electric hybrid, the Ampera. But at a price estimated by an Opel spokesman to be “between €35,000 to €40,000,” the Ampera—a European model of the much-anticipated Chevrolet Volt—will blaze no paths in the market for electric cars. And Opel seems fresh out of other ideas.

Developing a good electric motor is undoubtedly worthwhile. But it will still cost a lot more money than has already been spent, and pretending that electric cars are ready for mass production today is not only misleading but counterproductive. The public euphoria over the electric car is actually “harmful to the market,” explains Bernd Bohr, the head of the automobile division at Bosch. According to Bohr, some consumers, loath to spend money on what they believe to be obsolete technology, are holding off on buying new cars with gasoline engines.

Mitsubishi’s contribution, which is undoubtedly spectacular, shows just how far the new crop of electric cars are from being seriously ready for mass production. It is one of the first vehicles of its kind to store electricity in lithium ion batteries, the most powerful available on the market today. The batteries are located in the floor of the car, underneath the seats, weigh just under 200 kilograms (440 lbs.) and store 16 kilowatt hours of energy, roughly equal to the fuel value of two liters (.53 gallon) of gasoline.

However, no more than about two-thirds of this energy reserve is usable, because regularly draining the battery would mean that it would never last as long as the life of a car. When driven at higher speeds, this type of car has a range of no more than 80 kilometers (50 miles). The range Mitsubishi specifies—which is twice as long—is based on the assumption that the car will be driven at slow speeds typical of Japanese traffic.

But the i MiEV’s biggest shortcoming is its price, which is about the same as that of a conventional mid-range car. Project manager Takayuki Yatabe admits that to cover its costs, Mitsubishi had to charge about 4 million yen, or roughly €32,000 ($40,000), for an i MiEV. To sell its planned production of 2,000 cars in Japan in the first year, the company hopes to qualify for government subsidies of about one million yen per car.

A car that costs as much as a Mercedes, but lacks the power for a weekend outing? It’s not even ready for a niche market. For this reason General Motors (GM) has opted for an electric model that features an auxiliary engine, also known as a serial hybrid.