How those posh fellas laughed. Golf buggies, lawnmowers, they called them. Electric cars, indeed. Pah! Well, we interrupt history to bring you the future. It’s green. It’s posh. And it’s suddenly everywhere.

At this year’s motor shows from Detroit to Geneva, almost every luxury marque put electric and hybrid “green” models front and centre. The biggest beast in the eco-jungle is the 102EX electric Rolls-Royce. At £2m, it is the most expensive model Rolls-Royce has yet produced and has a range of 125 miles.

Ferrari boasts the 599, a 200mph electric hybrid vehicle; Porsche has the devastating 767bhp Porsche 918 RSR hybrid race car and the Cayenne S hybrid SUV. Bentley likes to show off its 630hp, twin-turbo, 12-cylinder Continental that runs on ethanol and Land Rover its Land-e hybrid concept and Range Rover Evoque. Jaguar recently won the What Car? Green Car of the Year award for its diesel XJ.

At £2m, the 102EX electric Rolls-Royce is the company’s most expensive model yet

Daimler, BMW and Audi have so many different green models, running on everything from hydrogen fuel cells to bio-diesel, that they are hiring thousands of workers and expanding factories to meet growing demand.

California’s Tesla, the original luxury green car-maker that has sold almost 2,000 Tesla Roadsters around the world, is expanding, too. It plans to produce 5,000 of its Model S electric cars with the first deliveries in mid-2012. The Model S, a four-door car, can go for 300 miles before it needs to be recharged.

The luxury green car sector is also attracting big money from some unlikely quarters. The Qatar Investment Authority, a sovereign wealth fund from a region with vast oil and gas reserves, has injected £50m into Fisker Automotive, the Californian electric car start-up co-founded by former Aston Martin designer Henrik Fisker.

Even the men who run Formula 1, the sport with the world’s biggest carbon footprint, are going green (sort of). The Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile, the body that runs F1, is examining plans to set up a racing championship series for electric cars as a way of increasing public awareness about new-technology vehicles.

People don’t want to give up performance, looks and comfort. Now they don’t have to

Yet as recently as last year, eco-friendly motoring was not a luxury pursuit. Fancy cars have remained largely an old-school, sooty fossil-fuelled business. What’s changed? “Three words,” says Frank Weber, the German-born leader of General Motor’s Volt electric car programme, whom BMW has just lured to Munich to bolster its drive to go green. “Range, design and comfort. People don’t want to give these up. Well, now they don’t have to. The technology has caught up with desire, with the market.” Henrik Fisker agrees: “There’s no rule that an environmental car has to be small and dorky any more.”

That’s partly thanks to technological change. The huge, nickel-metal-hydride batteries of the past that hogged space have been replaced by compact, power-dense lithium-ion battery, freeing designers to create flowing, luxurious forms. “Today’s customers want their high technology in a smartly designed package,” says Fisker. If the iPhone had been ugly, it wouldn’t have captured the market.”

It’s a view shared by Elon Musk, the man behind Tesla, who believes the stylish and compact Tesla Roadster is the 21^st-century equivalent of the sprightly British sports car. With the four-door Model S and fresh financing courtesy of Toyota, he argues Tesla is carrying conventional automotive glamour into the new era.

Musk points out that electric engines, with no gears, deliver peak torque from rest, which is ideal for slinging you silently and effortlessly to oblivion in a sports car. Going electric also creates the kind of smooth, quiet “waftable” ride that is the trademark of brands such as Rolls-Royce, whose most famous slogan is: “At 60mph the loudest thing you’ll hear is the ticking of the clock.”

But it’s not all about new technology and growing demand. Some industry analysts say regulatory pressures, more than consumer demand or automaker altruism, are driving the luxury eco market. Achieving fuel economy standards proposed by the US administration and the EU is all but impossible for many exclusive luxury and sports-car makers, such as Mercedes and Porsche, which cannot offset thirstier models with sales of tiny economy cars. In response, these marques are hedging their bets by developing a range of alternative fuel technologies.

Opinions vary widely on how fast green cars will make it from the showrooms to driveways

Other external factors are at play, too. In the US the catastrophic BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico last year revived anxiety over the national addiction to oil. Growing unrest in the Middle East is pushing up fuel prices. Going green also attracts grants. Earlier this year, Fisker received £350m under a loan programme for advanced technology cars from the US government, while Tesla received £300m.

Whether it’s altruism or the market talking, it’s all systems go for a future in which luxury driving doesn’t depend on fossil fuels, right? Not so fast. Opinions vary widely on how fast green cars and green luxury cars will make it out of the showrooms and on to driveways. No-one, not even car manufacturers who invest millions in market research, can agree on how much anxiety—fear of running out of power, worries about handling high-voltage fast chargers and concerns about how batteries will perform in extreme temperatures—will affect sales.

Nissan and Renault chief, Carlos Ghosn, predicts that 10 per cent of global car sales will be electric by 2020. Not so, says Daimler boss, Dieter Zetsche, who argues that the combined hybrid and electric vehicles may be between one and five per cent of global sales by 2020. Market research supports Zetsche’s estimate. A consumer survey by Deloitte Consulting found that 70 per cent of potential buyers in the world’s biggest market, the US, would require a 300-mile range before buying an electric car, while nearly two-thirds lack home charging facilities. No manufacturer yet offers a range of more than 250 miles—on a good day. Taking all this into account, Deloitte predicts 3.1 per cent market penetration of green cars by 2020.

As oil prices rise and even pampered plutocrats want to be seen to be environmentally responsible—without giving up their comforts—one thing seems certain: a throbbing petrol V12 won’t remain the acme of desire forever. The route to a clearer conscience is open. Gentlemen, plug in your engines.