Better Lithium-Ion batteries are on the way from Berkeley Lab
newscenter.lbl.gov
newscenter.lbl.gov
Basically they are attacking one of the current problems with LIon batteries which is degredation in the anode over time across recharge cycles causes them to lose capacity. The current 'best practice' anode is graphite which works well but limits the charge it can hold. Their polymer in the lab is 10x better at holding charge. They give some analysis of why its durability should be good too. If so, and we can get batteries made with this polymer ion they would have 10x the capacity of current batteries.
That is all great except reduction into something manufacturable and repeatable is like a 3 year process so 2015 you might see them.
DAVIES: Now that there's more interest in electric cars, is there a concern that, you know, the known lithium deposits will be inadequate for our needs in the future?
Mr. FLETCHER: Not anytime soon. I - these things are hard to forecast 100 years out, of course, because nobody knows what's going to happen. But when I was at the Annual Lithium Supply and Markets Conference last January, an analyst got up and basically told all the miners in the audience that there was going to be such an enormous oversupply in the last half of this decade that only the strongest were going to survive. There are a lot of people getting into the lithium mining business right now, but there seems to be more than enough to go around. And so I haven't seen anybody express concern about lithium supplies for any foreseeable reasonable number of these cars, you know, in batteries.
Of course, I'll just point out a misperception. A lot of people speak of lithium as if its oil. They talk about Bolivia or Chile being the Saudi Arabia of lithium. But you don't burn lithium. Lithium is a metal used to make a device that stores energy that's produced by other means. So it can be recycled. The batteries can be reused. There is plenty to go around for quite some time.
http://www.npr.org/2011/06/08/136856479/leading-the-charge-t...
But even if the only improvement is longer lifespan that would still be huge.