Under the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama, the federal government has tried to reinvent the automobile with ethanol and battery power.
As you might surmise, this does indeed mean there is an internal battery, making it useful beyond the confines of the automobile too (for about an hour according to the car maker).
Even at standard electric rates which average about 10 cents per kilowatt hour nationwide it costs just 2 cents a mile to run a Volt or a Leaf on battery power, barely a fifth of what it would cost to run a comparable gasoline-powered automobile.