Heh anyone else notice the high power battery weighs almost 25% more so it is only slightly better wh/k then the old design? Better wh/l tho thats for sure.

"..5,000 hours of durability.."

If they can develop larger, more efficient and more cost effective DMFCs, that would solve a LOT of problems with transportation. An EV with some batteries AND a range extending DMFC could run on M100 at $2 per gallon and get 60 mpg.

Tesla’s Model S use 8000 of these 18650 cells to get a 70kWh battery for their 300 miles version of the Model S using about 0.233 kWh per mile.(1) If Tesla used the 3.4A cell from Panasonic they could make a (8000*12.2Wh=) 97.6 kWh battery and get a (97.6/0.233) = 418 miles range for the Model S. That is enough for 6 hours of non-stop driving at 70 mph. That will probably cover 100% of the travel needed by 99% of all potential private car owners.

In my opinion the emergence of this kind of batteries will make a very large part of the high end vehicle market go pure electric in order to avoid the inconvenience of fueling at public gas stations and in order to avoid the noise and vibrations that follow with internal combustion engines.

References:
1) Model S battery pack specifications:
http://www.autobloggreen.com/2009/03/26/tesla-model-s-50-000-ev-sedan-seats-seven-300-mile-range-0-6/

Ever since "pay at the pump" (with credit card) people have not had to go inside of gas stations (you used to have to walk inside to pay).
If it takes 20 minutes to recharge your EV you'll have to kill some time. I would think the gas stations would love this and readily make chargers available.

@SJC
Wouldn't it be better to have some dwell time as long
as there was an available "charge cord" available for other customers to use?

I would think they would have to be making more money if people also came inside and bought something while they waited for the charge.

Of course, if they are blocking all the charging stations that is clearly a bad thing and a 20 minute charge makes that much more likely.

SJC said, "It is dwell time that costs. You want people in an out leaving money every five minutes. They would have to charge you for that instead of turning over several customers in the same time."

Wrong - they absolutely want you IN the store. They make nearly nothing on the sale of fuel and rely upon sales of goods inside their stores (or sales of maintenance) for profits. I would imagine the sales of electricity would follow nearly the same model except a large battery pack means you spend more time in the store and are more likely to buy a coffee or soda (which they pay maybe $0.08 to $0.18 cents out of pocket and earn $1 to $2 in revenue).

@DaveD:
How about we tow the Tesla roadster to the track with just enough quick discharge and fast re-charge batteries to drive about 20 miles at wide open power; three sessions for practice, qualifying and the race, with charges in between. How much lightness would that add?

Sorry SJC but Patrick is right: A station owner will make more profit selling you a can of pop than he will selling you a tank of gas.

However you are also right in that he doesn't want you dwelling at the pumps themselves. Fuel pumps cost a lot of money and refueling islands take up a lot of the limited space so they are a bottleneck.

You have to stop thinking of recharging your car in the gas station model; think of it in the destination model. You go somewhere on the charge you have from home, park/plug-in and do what you have to do while it's recharging. Gas stations have had to become convenience stores to stay profitable but with EVs it will be the other way around; convenience stores will become recharging stations. You wont be waiting in line because the whole parking lot will have charging posts; the parkingmeters on the streets will have plugs, etc.

If you are going on a long trip it's simpler to use gas station as gas stations: The only difference is if you're driving a BEV you'll be gasing up the genset trailer hitched to the back.

You guys can wait in line to recharge at Exxon, I am going to go to one of the 20 recharge stations each McDonalds will have along every interstate location. I plug in my car for 11 cents a kWh, about 1 cent more than the local price, and I go inside and get a meal and a shake. By the time I am finished 30 minutes later, my car has more than half a charge. Since it would take nearly an hour to get the last half, I take off knowing that there are McDonalds everywhere, and if I get truly desperate, an Exxon/Shell station.

This is why I am so upset about our own DOE in the purchase of some 5000 Nissan Leafs.

City businesses and charging stations will evolve as will interstate convenience stores in ways that no one cannot predict – each step will be affected by the previous step and the changing environment over the next 20 years.

Is the DOE wasting billions of their dollars playing Simcity?.

No.

They are playing with and wasting OUR money.

This is very good news. Once Toyota comes out with their plug in hybrid, I am sure that they will use these batteries to lower the weight of the battery pack and/or increase the all electric range. Ford and GM...watch out.

Patrick and ai_vin, no one KNOWS but everyone expresses an opinion. Unless you have numbers supporting the volume and margins of stores associated with gasoline filling stations and you KNOW the real profit margin of gasoline you are just guessing and expressing an uninformed opinion of what you think is the case.

So am I, but as long as we are going on observation, when I go into those stores I seldom see people loitering for 20 minutes and standing in line to buy overpriced items. They do good business, but if every person's car is sitting in front of a pump with a full tank, I KNOW that I am not making any money on that pump selling gasoline.

They put stores in because there had to be someone there and they might as well be doing something to make more money. Some filling stations might make more money on donuts than fuel, but that is not the main reason. They also have car washes, but I doubt that they make more money on those than selling gasoline. I know when I see a tanker truck there they are filling tanks for quite a while, so they must be selling some gasoline.

There is no sense arguing about something that none of us KNOWS about, that is idiocy. I am just expressing how I would run my gasoline/charging station. That would be an operations plan developed by studying the numbers and formulating an optimal plan designed to make the most money. I certainly would not create that plan from reading people online.