Actually CD, there are an awful lot of holes in the ground world-wide and the entire history of "proven reserves" has been nothing but upwards since we first started worrying about such things back in the seventies. Boasun's point about the inherent political decisions that are made in the production of those reserves is not hardly without merit.
As to your electric car idea, let's assume for argument's sake that the battery technology is here today and viable. Where does that put us? California already suffers from brown-outs just running their household air conditioners and we import substantial electricity already from Canada. We are perhaps less self-sufficent in terms of electricity production than we are in terms of oil production. Let's not even get into the kum-ba-ya feelings that permeate the alternative energy crowd. It's not only woefully inefficient, it's woefully inadequate for anything even approaching our current needs and is likely to remain so for much of the near future (25 years?). Advances will be made and they will be more rapid as the profit potential rises, ie...energy costs continue to escalate. But, you will have noticed, in the article and comments, that an oil surplus is a few years around the corner in all likelihood as it historically has been when prices rise dramatically.
Here's an interesting article on the cost benefit analysis of buying a hybrid electric car and I'm including a link to a reader's response as well as it shows better some just cocktail napkin calculations as to effectiveness.
The American Spectator
The American Spectator -look for the
Don't get me started letter by John Music