Last week or so we talked a little bit about a China-based company called Chery that hopes to make half of the cars in China a hybrid by the year 2010 and the much acclaimed Tata Nano, or the “people’s car” of India. The Nano is getting a lot of hype not because it is eco-friendly but because it is dirt cheap. So we’ve covered some news in hybrids and the dirt cheap cars.

Now electric. This is frankly a lot more exciting. We are dedicating this post to Miles Electric Vehicles who announced today a $15mm investment round led by the Angeleno Group. The funds will be used to advance the development of their cool all electric highway speed sedan. Basically, Miles makes 3 vehicles – all electric, low speed truck – all electric, low speed car – and an all electric, highway speed sedan.

The sedan is an awesome car with rapid acceleration to top speed of 80+ mph and can go for about 120 miles without a recharge, and a battery life of 100,000 miles. The sedan can plug into any standard 220 V wall socket. The low speed car and truck can cruise at speeds of 25 mph for about 40-60 miles.

Miles was founded in 2005 in Santa Monica, CA by Miles Rubin dedicated to changing the world one car at a time by building safe, comfortable and affordable all electric cars and trucks that make it easy for individuals and fleets to make a difference. To date Miles has provided custom fleets for the City of Chicago, NASA, UCLA, Cal Sate Polytechnic University, Stanford University, the U.S. Navy, the National Park Service, and the Sacramento Municipal Utility District.

Phoenix Motorcars is another name you need to know if you want to learn about electric vehicles. They have been on the HGTV show “Living with Ed” where Jay Leno and Ed Begley look under the hood of the Phoenix SUT (Sport Utility Truck) that is an all-battery powered, zero emissions vehicle with speeds of up to 95 mph carrying four passengers a full payload, and can go approx. 100 miles per charge. A really, really cool product.

Both companies plan to produce a consumer version of their vehicles for the masses by late 2009.