This should blow "Saint Ronnie's" image with Republicans out of the water, found in a magazine type article on the BBC web site giving background to a radio program:
In 1969 Reagan, then Governor of California, visited a symposium on electric vehicles in Phoenix, Arizona. He was so impressed with one foreign model which was in limited production, he declared "Why can't we do that here?". He offered to find the manufacturer a factory site and promised subsidies and guaranteed orders. He even suggested that people buying a home on Catalina Island should be given one - petrol vehicles were, and still are, restricted there.
A two seat commuter vehicle, it could reach 48 m.p.h. and had a range of up to 56 miles using the lead acid battery technology available at the time. Some enthusiasts are looking to updating their vintage cars to modern batteries to illustrate how the range could be extended. It was charged by simply plugging in to a domestic mains socket.
The car in question came out of a competition by the United Kingdom Electricity Authority to design a vehicle for, mainly, their meter readers. Their work involved the sort of stop/start journeys that were common to electric milk delivery carts which had all but replaced the earlier horse drawn ones. (I can just about remember those; they had the enormous advantage that often the horse knew the route better than the milk deliverer so would be almost autonomous.) The meter readers did not need to carry loads or equipment, so a two seat car was more than adequate. It was also a promotional vehicle (in both senses) for electricity which competed with domestic gas for uses like cooking and heating. The various nationalized local gas "boards" also promoted that fuel's use in such appliances as fridges and tumble driers. The electricity authority promoted their fuel as modern and clean in comparison.
Various companies had entered the competition, including Ford. In the end a design by a small engineering company, Enfield Automotive won. Their design, the Enfield 8000 had a large curved windscreen and when wind tunnel tested it proved to have less drag than a Porsche. It went from 0-30 mph in 12.5 seconds and left many of its contemporary petrol driven cars behind at the lights.
About 100 Enfield 8000s were built but it faced two all too familiar problems. The retail price in the UK was twice that of a Mini. On a promotional tour to the USA, during which Reagan saw it, the team would be phoned by the local gas station owner who screamed that they were trying to put him out of business. The owner of Enfield Automotive, who turned down Reagan's offer, came from a wealthy Greek shipping family with interests in oil tankers. Whether those were the cause of his eventually stopping production is speculative.
Still, it remains interesting that had Ronald Reagan got his way, America could have had a thriving electric car industry 40 years ago.