Yes and no. You can still buy a NiMH battery and a silver can brushed 540 motor if you want too. The price on that stuff has come down significantly. It's the LiPo batteries and brushless motors that cost all the money these days. Then again, they really are in a different league as far as performance and runtime. Back in the day of crystal radios if you wanted to go 50+ MPH you either had to have a nitro engine or you just had a 9T motor that killed your battery in 3 minutes.

Today's electric cars have aaaaalmost made nitro obsolete... not only from a reliability standpoint (like always) but from a performance standpoint as well. Obviously the market for nitro fun will always exist, but if you're just looking for performance these days there is no benefit nitro has over electric anymore.