Future higher performance lower cost battery technologies are still being developed in 50+ labs and start ups around the country and another 100+ places around the world. Nothing worthwhile may hit the market place much before 2015/2020 unless industrial nations invest much more aggressively in R & D and large mass production automated facilities.

Meanwhile, various electrified vehicle configurations will be offered as gap fillers, HEVs, with small batteries, will be around for another 5 to 10 years and PHEVs, with various e-range and size, will be around for at least 20 years.

Short e-range city type BEVs will co-exist with the other two for many years. Long range, light weight, BEVs with improved performance and lower cost batteries may not be available (at an affordable price) much before 2020 unless somebody comes out with a major battery technology breakthrough in the next two or three years.

Two decades to go from inefficient polluting ICE vehicles to high efficiency clean electrified vehicles is not that long.

"over 90 percent designed a PHEV that requires a battery smaller than 4.0 kWh and nearly 75% designed a PHEV that requires a battery smaller than 2 kWh."

Sure, most said under 2 kWh until they find out that it has short range. Is it even worth it to plug in less than 2 kWh?
One kWh can be charged in less that an hour and take you about 4 miles, so I do not see the advantage.

nordic: I have no particular argument with NG vehicles, they are certainly an improvement on gasoline or diesel vehicles, but I'm afraid the rest of your post is an echo of petroleum industry shill lies.
1) The "long tailpipe" talking point has been demonstrated many times to be a worst case scenario. Using numbers from Argonne NL a CNG ICE vehicle will use arround 4,500 btu's per mile (releasing about 300gCO2/mile). An EV from the US grid (which nowhere near as clean as the Canadian grid) will use just about 2,500 btu's per mile (less than 250gCO2/mile). These numbers are well-to-wheel. Electrical generation from NG (combined cycle) is much more efficient than ICE engines. (both electricity and NG have transmission losses/expenses, electric motors are very efficient but not perfect, NG requires energy to compress it for transport in a vehicle)
2) "The grid will collapse" .. another scare tactic for a worst case scenario. The best case scenario requires no new infrastructure and makes much better use of existing generating facilities. Personally, I charge at night and start the next day with a full "tank".

nordic:

Our electricity is currently 98% Hydro + 2% Wind. As more and more wind turbines and Hydro plants are being added, the ratio may slowly change but it will remain at 90+% Hydro for decades to come.

Other countries (like France) are 80% Nuclear. Not all countries rely on lower cost dirty coal fired power plants. Even USA is progressively switching to cleaner Nuclear, NG, Wind and Solar energy sources.

With solar panels efficiency going up (above 21% now and 30+% by 2020) and cost per watt going down, many residences will install PVs to generate a high percentage of the e-energy they use. The equivalent to 6 to 10 Kwh required daily by the family BEV or PHEV could be produced with a 2 KW installation. The surplus could be used by the family house or sold to the main e-power supplier.

E-energy does not have to be from polluting sources.

I would like enough solar panels to power my car and home. When they get down to about $3 per watt installed, that may be possible.

Nanosolar is selling to utilities right now, but they may start selling to end users. If it is like Unisolar, they will sell at market rates to make money for expansion. I am waiting for some company to just make an all out effort to reduce the price, but when they can sell all they can make at present prices, that is what they will do.

"The $300 billion or so that goes out of the coutry per year for foreign oil is a huge opportunity to create a domestic industry to power cars. Vehicle electrification will have huge benfits enconomically and environmentally."

More like $450B in 2008. Yes. That money is on the table for the taking by domestic industries that can find viable alternatives to oil. As vexing as it may be to the global government dream - our best hope for fast transition to lower carbon energy is national energy security and the jobs it will create. Clean grid energy is near term resource for EV charging. Later, distributed residential power units combining solar and CHP will generate clean energy locally and dispense with high voltage grid wiring.

The EFFPOWER lead acid bipolar design or the Csiro lead acid ultra-capacitor design batteries are well suited for the high powers needed for acceleration from stops. Small flywheels such as the electric version of the Flybrid technology can also be used in electric vehicles for high acceleration. Some version of the Firefly carbon foam technology is more than sufficient for a cheap battery for a 20 mile range as has been demonstrated by Ron Gremban of Calcars with his first version of the Prius+. Calcars and ACpropulsion and Ian Wright have all demonstrated that a PHEV can get five miles or more on a kilowatt hour, except for Ian Wright, they have also all demonstrated this with lead acid batteries that are relatively cheap. Some versions of pure lead grid spiralwound absorbed glass mat batteries demonstrate a possibility of having a long cheap life as well; compared to NiMH. Bipolar nickel cadmium batteries are also suited very high acceleration power and long life.

What people want and what they will use for transportation, if necesssary, are almost exclusive. The Tesla is the ELECTRIC HUMMER and was designed for high cost and high electric consumption, but this is disguised by the fact that electric motors have a high efficiency at low and high speeds and when the vehicle is stopped at a light, sign or in traffic. Introducing 50 mph speed limits on motorways within cities and near them would cut massive amounts off of fuel use. No high speed car can be considered energy efficient. I do not mind people operating cars at high speed as long as they are not pretending to be ecologically correct just because they have a TESLA.

A limited speed plug-in-hybrid electric car designed for the lowest possible cost similar to the TATA NANO is the way to get electric cars on the road. It is bad engineering to eliminate internal combustion engines from electric cars. It may also be bad engineering to use expensive transistor converter boxes to run the car's electric motors. Motors with brushes and speed control resistor switches are adequate for almost every electric car use, but eventually the price of electronics of car motor control can get low as the price for computer memory did.

Atomobiles that are used usually only for short distances should not have an expensive hundred mile battery in them.

I case anybody has forgotten, a standard ZEBRA battery pack has been able to move a Prius+ 80 miles for over ten years. The cost could be much lower if millions were made.

Liquid fuels can be made from nuclear or solar energy at a cost much lower than 150 a barrel and use recycled CO2 as well, so there is limited reason for long range total electric vehicles. Recent fuel cell developments do not induce the use of fuelcells in cars as much as that they should be used in combined cycle mode in homes for higher efficiency whilst charging batteries. The small fuel cells are an option instead of range extending engines but are too expensive. The OORJA methanol one should be installed in TH!NKs and TESLAs since their price is so high anyway.

Lead batteries do not need to last the life of the vehicle because their cost is so low and the cost of energy stored in them is acceptably low. ..HG..