Dave,
While what you say is true about state of the art electrics, it is not true of the stuff a beginner is likely to choose. For a beginner to start out with electrics the choices are either the "small. fragile, underpowered, have short flight times, and can not be flown if its breezy out" kind of park flyer, or the beginner has to invest a huge amount of research and money into developing his own aircraft/motor/speed control/battery pack/charger combination.

YEs electrics have come a tremendously long way in the past couple of years, but they still aren't "plug and play" like glow powered trainers are.
Dennis-