In the last few years the automotive industry has experienced some important changes both from a managerial and from an organizational point of view. Today the main challenge for all the most important automakers is to develop and produce vehicles that can, at the same time, maintain a good level of performances while lowering emissions and fuel consumptions. Battery electric vehicles (BEV) and, mostly, hybrid electric vehicles (HEV) can be considered, at a first look, good alternatives to traditional cars and can represent the possible future of the automotive industry. Nevertheless there are still some important arguments that must be faced and some important questions that must be answered. Are electric cars more convenient from an economical point of view? Is their environmental impact really lower than traditional cars? Is it convenient for the companies to produce them? Only analyzing more in depth all the aspects related to the production and the commercialization of these products can be found an adequate response to all these questions. This work, thus, is trying to solve these problems and give a rational and elaborated answer based on academic and specialized sources.