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False again!

First off, "li-cell" != "li-ion". A "li-cell" is a "lithium battery", which is a type of primary cell, and which predates lithium-ion to the market. Secondly, you're absolutely wrong in your assertion. Even traditional cobalt cathodes alone have gone from ~1200mAh in 1994 to almost 3000mAh in 2008. In the past year and a half alone, li-ion batteries on the market have gone from 160Wh/kg to 200Wh/kg. For God's sake, research a topic before you start spouting off about it.

Have you seriously not noticed how battery life keeps going up at the same time the batteries keep getting smaller? And if so, how did you get net access to make that post from your cave?

A survey conducted by the Rechargeable Battery Association (RBRC) reveals that 70% of users are unaware that cell phones (and their batteries) are recyclable.

Approximately 2.5 million phones were collected to be refurbished or recycled from 1999 to early 2003. This is less than 1% of the known used cell phones currently in the U.S.

Bette Fishbein, a senior researcher at Inform, estimates that only 20 percent of mobile phone batteries are recycled under current voluntary industry-sponsored guidelines, despite programs such as Verizonâ(TM)s âoeNew for Twoâ trade-in program.

• Li-ion: 160Wh/kg
• Ni-MH: 30...80 Wh/kg
• Ultracap: 3...5 Wh/kg

You could put a million PHEV's on the road tomorrow and people could plug them into any convenient 110 volt outlet at night.

No, you couldn't, because people wouldn't buy a million cars in a day.

Way to misunderstand the English language. The first clause was clearly not a proposal to do so (even so, a million cars is only about 21 days of sales and could theoretically all be delivered to buyers on the same day) and you ignore the truth of the second clause.

You are misusing "infrastructure".

See the term "transportation infrastructure"

So right on the first page, it has:

Writes legislation regarding aviation, railroads, navigable waterways, roads, and public works projects.

In transport-speak, "infrastructure" refers to highways, streets, roads and bridges, rails and pipelines (consistent definition here).

You are either too stupid to understand English, or trolling.

you assume people are idiots. You act like they're just going to watch fields go dry one by one while twiddling their thumbs.

Given you as an example, that's a pretty safe assumption.

That's exactly what we did in the 1960's as US oil production peaked and fell while consumption continued to climb. This led to our vulnerability to the OPEC oil price shocks in the 1970's. Why should I expect the public to learn such lessons from history? It's not like they ever did before. Heck, the same thing happened again in the 90's: business interests fought energy-efficiency standards for buildings in the name of "consumer demand", and now we are looking at having to import LNG in order to heat them. Designs available during that same period would need little or no heat. Why didn't we use those designs? Because people are idiots, QED.

And since I did the research for this, I'm going to post it:

even spiral-wound lead-acid is sufficient to get started.

No, not really (not to mention would be disastrous for the environment). At 25 Wh/kg, half a metric tonne of batteries alone -- a bloody 11 cubic feet -- to your car would only get you 12.5 kWh (and with how heavy your car will be, meaning wasteful use of energy for accel, that would be a range of something like 15 miles or so).

25 Wh/kg will get you 4 kWH out of 160 kg. That's plenty for driving around the neighborhood (12 miles @ 200 Wh/mi) plus surge power and regenerative braking. When they wear out, you replace them with carbon-foam backed lead-acid at 260 Wh/kg. They might be only 1/3 as dense, so you'll only get about 90 Wh in the space of your former 25 Wh cells; your capacity goes from 4 kWh up to 14 kWh while the weight falls to about 55 kg. This brings your all-electric range up to 50 miles plus surge power. The carbon foam backings eliminate the corrosion and sulfation failure modes of standard lead-acid, so they last about 10 years. If the car is worth refurbishing at 13 years of age, Li-ion chemistries will be ready to take over from lead-acid at that point (or you might just fit it out with 5-year-old units from a newer car being upgraded for better range).

As a consequence, the Chevy Volt, the type of car that we're both wanting to see as a stopgap, hinges entirely on the advancement of battery

How difficult is NaBO2 to deal with, and can it be dangerous/toxic?

From Batteries Digest:

The only other reaction product, sodium metaborate (analogous to borax), is water-soluble and environmentally benign.

BTW, this product is a result of DARPA-funded research at University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. Here's some info from 2002 about research in progress on batteries (you'll have to scroll down a bit to get to the part about formic acid research at UI-UC).
http://www.batteriesdigest.com/broad_spedtrum.htm

I've snipped the bit on formic acid cells: "The University of Illinois is investigating small formic acid micro fuel cells. These cells run successfully with formic acid concentrations between 5 and 20 M with little crossover or degradation in performance. Formic acid has a lower power density than methanol , but it provides higher peak power and easier water management with little crossover. Formic acid fuel cells also produce higher open circuit potentials and current densities."

Bad, bad example. Go sit in the corner.

Okay, now where were we?

Yes, hydrogen CAN be extracted from some hydrocarbon fuels, butwhile looking around for articles on it, I got the impression it's not much more cost or fuel efficient than plain old electrolysis.

There's this article:
http://www.batteriesdigest.com/hydrogen_extract.ht m
but I don't think I can trust an article where different sentence fragments were apparently written by people who didn't coordinate well with each other (this is an actual sentence from the above webpage):

"Electrolysis of water, the oldest known way to prepare hydrogen, is not new."

It may be that borax is in short supply in asian countries, but I think the US is the largest supplier of borates(including borax) in the world.

"While sodium-boro-hydride will strike some as an unusual fuel for an automobile, it has the advantages of the other fuels that have been proposed for fuel cell vehicles, without the significant disadvantages," said Thomas Moore, Vice President at DaimlerChrysler's Liberty & Technical Affairs research and development group. Mr. Moore believes that the most important unresolved issue with the fuel cell vehicles is not the fuel cell, but the fuel itself. Sodium boro-hydride is safe; it can be handled in dry form. It is nontoxic and nonflammable. It is available in large supplies in the United States; in fact, the U.S. has
the largest source of borax reserves in the
world. Infrastructure issues are less challenging than with other fuels proposed for fuel cell vehicles. The weight-energy storage is almost equivalent to gasoline; this means it generates about the same amount of energy per gallon of fuel as gasoline. In addition, three environmental benefits are: 1) no hydrocarbons are contributing to greenhouse gas buildup; 2) no smog-forming compounds are produced, and 3) the fuel itself can be recycled.

Aging is a concern with most lithium-ion batteries and many manufacturers remain silent about this issue. Some capacity deterioration is noticeable after one year, whether the battery is in use or not. The battery frequently fails after two or three years. It should be noted that other chemistries also have age-related degenerative effects. This is especially true for nickel-metal-hydride if exposed to high ambient temperatures.

Source: http://www.batteryuniversity.com/partone-5.htm

Properly cared for, the above GM LS6 engine and transmission might be expected to live for 200,000 miles with little more than oil changes, clutch replacements, and common tuneups. Given that the average American drives around 30,000 miles per year, that gives it an expected lifetime of almost seven years. Li-Ion packs would have to be replaced every two years at the most based on current battery technology. Li-Ion is fantastically expensive compared to run-of-the-mill lead-acid batteries or even NiCad or NiMH batteries. There's a reason GM went with lead-acid for the EV1, namely cheaper batteries and (supposedly) longer lifetimes.

I think it's safe to say that your ar

What if you put a scram jet ON a segway!? That's fun for the whole family!

Sure, till the battery runs out!

Jokes aside, I'm glad to read the page I linked to. If it's true, the problem reported awhile back about Segways stopped dead in their tracks when the battery runs low doesn't seem as bad as it was made out to be. However, it does still leave me with a question: what do you do with your Segway if the battery runs low and you're 3 miles from home? Can you carry a spare, or do you push it back home?