Regarding the safety of EV's and their batteries, there is no real safety advantage between Cylindrical and Prismatic packs. Cylindrical have some minor cooling advantages, but getting the same power density as prismatic packs is difficult. Mechanical strength is important, but the electronic monitoring will react well before any mechanical component has failed. The batteries are monitored (voltage, current, Charge state, State of Health and temperature) on the cell pack level, so even if a single cell shorted, the system will react in microseconds and like any ICE vehicle, the entire power source is also cut as soon as any crash is detected.
As for the driving experience, as mentioned above, it's the torque curve that people notice at first. People are used to an engine needing time to react, especially if they drove a diesel up to then. The motor definitely isn't an ON/OFF situation, it's just like any variable motor control.
I won't comment on the environmental or infrastructure aspect, that's politics not engineering and will be different for every country.
McBryce.
* This information/opinion doesn't come from a report, I've worked in EV and EV Baterry development for almost 20 years, including work on the Prius.