Manufacturing costs

I admit I have not studied the overall manufacturing costs, but I'm sure that I have read in a reliable source that the supply of high-energy light metal elements, particularly lithium on this planet is severely limited. And because of their properties (they are very reactive), they tend to be difficult to mine and refine, all of which takes energy.

It is OK to use the current prices at todays demand level, but if we are to have a battery powered transport system, I suspect that the demand for these metals, particularly lithium, will easily outstrip supply. Prices will jump, and the whole technology may become too expensive.

Currently, it is wasteful that battery manufacturers are making disposable lithium AA sized batteries (just look at the supermarket battery section). Because of it's chemistry, lithium is likely to become a much more important across the whole range of manufacturing. We must introduce a lithium recovery programme in the waste stream, and educate users not to throw them in the domestic waste.

BTW. Current LiPoly. batteries have a duty cycle of about 1000 discharge-charge cycles. This means that keeping a car used daily on the road will require the batteries to be replaced after 3 years, with progressivly poorer performance at the end of that time, like your Laptop (current charging efficiency quotes 99.8% for LiPoly. batteries, 0.998^1000=0.135=13.5% of original capacity at the end-of-life of the battery). Good news for the car manufacturers, bad news for residual car values. How does that factor in to the overall cost-of-ownership for an electric vehicle?

Of course, we could just wait until someone invents a better battery technology, but a chemical battery is unlikely to provide that much more energy than is possible using lithium without actually being dangerous (it's chemistry, stupid). I wish Shipstones and micro-pile fusion generators were not science fiction.