Without getting into a dispute over lithium batteries, the national scandal is that for a decade we have had a battery, NiMH, which can be the basis of a sound electric car industry. This battery has been proven reliable and durable over billions of miles by hybrids. In the few hundred pure electric vehicles that Toyota didn't destroy they have given virtually trouble-free performance for distances of over a hundred thousand miles. Reputedly SCE, which operates a fleet of them, has increased the range of this small SUV to about 150 miles.

Desertstraw, NiMH is a thoroughly proven battery technology that performs exceptionally in hundreds of thousands of Prius class HEVs. The problem is that the M is a rare earth metal named lanthanum that is in very short supply. At present, China is responsible for over 95% of global rare earth metal production and they're clamping down on exports because they need their rare earth metal production for their domestic market. If you're looking for the real reason everybody is talking lithium, you need look no further than global shortages of lanthanum.

What a load of rubbish! In your ignorance you have completely passed by induction motors, as used by Tesla Motors that use nothing more exotic than copper and steel!

As for Li-ion batteries, Nisan have already committed to production of lithium-ion battery using a lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxide cathode with roughly DOUBLE the power density as standard Li-ion at approx the same price (which will reduce with volume)

If you're claiming you can predict the future (ie. how the EV market will pan out) then get down to the local horse track...

You can't read a few reports and become an expert on an ENGINEERING subject! You have to actually know something about ENGINEERING!

Great points on Li-ion and rare earth magnets.
Adding to your points on the post on GEVs: part of the special sauce to sell the concept is always the promise of SmartGrid integration for "peak load balancing" - that energy will flow in and out of your park-n-plugged GEV from and to the utility grid. Now getting power from the grid is so simple, your mother-in-law could go (indeed, may well have already gone) to Home Depot and buy parts for $20 and build an applicance to take power from the grid (think "lamp").
But putting power back to the grid is very complicated, requires relatively expensive electronic control (rated to withstand lightning strikes), gets involved with regulatory issues, and requires reliable auditing of costs to and fro - all this for 25kWh of power if it drains your GEV (making it unusable until recharged off-peak), worth $2 at 0.08 per kWh! Yeah baby - another viable plan there!

Paul, Tesla may be using an induction motor, but Toyota, Nissan and all of the top tier OEMs plan to use permanent magnets. Presumably they have a good reason for doing so. If it was a non-issue, the DOE wouldn't be planning another major research program to find a solution.

The quote on battery costs and energy comes directly from the DOE and the conclusions about future prices come directly from the National Research Council. I'm not predicting. I'm merely reporting what the experts predict. The long awaited price collapse in lithium batteries could happen any day now, but it won't happen without a battery fairy godmother to slash raw materials and equipment costs. I'd also point out that collapsing battery prices will never be a good thing for stockholders of battery companies.

It doesn't take an engineering degree to read technical reports, think about what the experts are saying, and perform rudimentary financial calculations to forecast the impact. It does take time and effort. I would encourage you to invest a little of both before criticizing.

Why are so many manufacturers developing electric vehicles? I hear of new models and makers almost daily. Do they not have the same insight as you?

Much of the impetus for plug-ins comes from a small but very vocal group of activists and government officials. When faced with ever tightening environmental restrictions and the veiled threat of "you will make a plug-in if you want to continue selling cars in California" it's far easier to capitulate with grace than fight the powers that be, even if you expect disaster.

John Peterson: your paranoid view of California "environmental activists" forcing auto makers to produce plug-in electric/hybrid cars would be more persuasive if only American companies were adopting this "self-destructive behavior". California has less people than Spain - not exactly the "must have" market of, say, China, which is 42 times bigger. Even Japan is 4 times bigger.

Given that Japanese, Chinese, French, and German automakers are also rushing to bring such cars to their domestic markets, there is clearly something else going on: look into Peak Oil for a clue as to why the world is moving away from classical ICE cars.

Were it a country, California would be the 8th largest economy in the world. That is by definition a must have market.

I agree wholeheartedly that we must move away from conventional ICE. The problem is that moving from ICE to HEV (without plugs) will save 4X more gasoline and 10X more CO2 emissions than moving to plug-in vehicles. For more detail see todays new article.

If California were a country, it would be the 10th largest economy in the world.
The U.S., China, Japan, India, Germany, Russia, United Kingdom, France and Brazil would all be larger, and Italy would be just about as large.

But it is not "economies" that buy cars, it's people. 37 million people of California might have a large GSP, but the per capita income only ranks 7th in the US. Large parts of the central valley are impoverished - Larry Ellison of Oracle might make $500 million/year, but how many cars will he buy ? 3 ? The nine countries, plus Italy, all have many more people than California.

China and India are the obvious prizes for auto manufacturers, not California.

Plug-in vehicles replace oil products with electricity.
Cleaning up the electrical grid is a separate problem.

That's exactly the problem!

HEVs use a little bit of battery capacity to reduce gasoline waste - to reduce the total amount of energy consumed in transportation.

Plug-ins use a lot of battery capacity to take the fuel combustion out from under the hood and move it to a power plant. They do nothing to reduce aggregate consumption of energy.

For the foreseeable future, battery supplies will be the chokepoint in the commercialization of HEVs and plug-ins. If the batteries are devoted to HEVs there is an immense reduction in global energy use. If the batteries are devoted to plug-ins, global use does not change.

Thanks for giving me an idea for my next article.

John Petersen's comments about a 'coming storm' for lithium-ion battery technologies are right on-the-mark. Somewhat further out in time (~5 years or so)is a potential 'super storm for li-ion and all chemically-based battery technologies: it is called low energy nuclear reactions or LENRs. Importantly, while presently still obscure and quietly under development, it is a truly clean, 'green' nuclear energy technology. LENRs do not produce gamma radiation, energetic neutrons, or long-lived radioactive isotopes. Thus, shielding and containment subsystems are not required and, if the technology can be successfully commercialized, battery-like LENR devices with energy densities a million times greater than chemical batteries could potentially be realized. There are presently no 'pure' publicly-traded stock plays in this technology. However, some very large public companies such as Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (Japan), STMicroelectronics (Italy), Pirelli (Italy), Toyota (Japan), and Honda (Japan) have disclosed active R&D programs in this area and will develop commercial LENR-based products if they are able to. Investors with positions in battery companies should closely monitor technical developments in this arena. BTW - the American Chemical Society electronically published a "Sourcebook" on LENRs and related new energy technologies about two weeks ago.