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There are Lithium chemistries that are "safe". The LiFePo chemistry is relatively safe. It does not catch fire like the cobalt based Lithium Ion batteries can do. Valence Technology had an mpg on their site where they shot a bullet into their battery. The battery got badly distorted but it did not catch fire nor explode. Here is their latest video: http://www.valence.com/technology/battery_safety/battery_safety_video

Ok, so they are going to use 200KW for 10 minutes or about 34kWhrs. These guys make a system that is probably currently the best bet for power density vs orbital safety, the EEV version has 1306 Wh and weighs 15.6kg. At 80% discharge that's about 1KWhr. That means that you need ~530Kg of batteries, at $10K/lb that comes out to $12M to launch the batteries for this thing. I was going to suggest ultracapacitors but it turns out they suck for energy density, on the order of less than 6Wh/Kg! Reading on wikipedia (yeah, I know) Lithium Ion batteries with nanowires achieve almost 15kWHrs/Kg (.75 * 4,2000 mAh/g @ a nominal 3.6V per cell) so developing them would save almost the entire launch cost AND get us better batteries for all sorts of terrestrial applications!

Looks great for "micro-hybrid" cars that use only a small battery for recovering braking energy and a boost on accelerating. In these applications, you need a lot of power density. Or simply as a starter battery (good bye lead-acid).

For plug-in hybrids or electric only cars, LiPO4 is also interesting:
somewhat higher energy density, and the lower power density is not a problem due to the larger battery. An example of a system that seems to be commercially available:
http://www.valence.com/products/epoch_overview.html

A123 and Valence offer Lithium Nano Phosphate and Lithium Iron Phosphate cells that can source current at up to 60 times their total amp-hour rating and still deliver 100% of their energy rating, and have excellent safety compared to existing Li-Ion and LiPoly cells. A123 has $350M to spend, and deals with DeWalt/Black and Decker on sale now, and Chevy Volt on the table. It's going to be hard for Stanford to catch up.

Nevertheless, I'm quite excited about all these new Lithium battery technologies and have written a brief article about them for enthusiasts. I think there will be tremendous competitive pressure from these deals and developments, and 2008 will see a big change in batteries, relegating Lead Acid and Nickel Metal Hydride increasingly to niche application status.

Who said anything about using standard Ii-Ion batteries? TFA just says they are using Lithium batteries. I would imagine they are using LiFePO4 batteries (Lithium phosphate batteries) as have already been covered on slashdot several times before. The nano particle versions of these have charge characteristics similar to what are described in the article, have much longer duty cycles than lead acid batteries, much better power to weight rations and capacity, and have significantly improved safety over standard lithium Ion batteries. ( eg. you can cut them in half / shoot them / mash them to a pulp) and they wont explode.
Companies such as A123
and Valence Technology
and many others are already making these commercially available batteries.

They are also apparently recyclable and not as nasty on the environment as lead acid batteries either.

First, The distinction of Li-Poly from the general chemistry of Li-Ion is in the electrolyte. Instead of a liquid or gel electrolyte, the Li-Poly cell uses a thin sheet of conductive polymer doped with ionic compounds. Now while this polymer electrolyte has less mobility than a liquid, resulting in a lower energy density (J/cm^3) and power density (W/cm^3), in practice the manufactured shapes can be more complex than the coin or cylindrical shapes imposed by liquid electrolytes. Therefore more "battery cell" can be stuffed into otherwise unused volumes, and in many applications this maximizes the effective energy density beyond what can be achieved using cylindrical cells.

Second, any Lithium chemistry cell using a Cobalt-alloy cathode (virtually all of them on the market today) is subject to a thermal runaway condition if the internal cell temperature exceeds 130C. This includes Li-Poly cells.

Valence corp has patented a Lithium-Iron-Phosphate cathode chemistry that has less energy density, similar to NiCd, however the change to a Iron cathode eliminates the thermal runaway possiblity, making the cells much safer. These will soon be available commercially from DeWalt as battery packs for their cordless power tools. Here is a press release... note that Valence later bought the company referenced therein, A123 Systems. (I wonder if there's been a delay somewhere - DeWalt was marketing this much more heavily just a few months ago, now you have to do a search on their site to find any reference of it.)

Another company, Altair Nanotechnologies, has patented a Litium Titanate Spinel anode technology that also claims to eliminate the risk of fire and improve on both the Energy Density and Power Density of vanilla Li-Ion. However they have yet to actually deliver cells (to me anyway, despite many requests). And this chemistry is not exclusive to the Iron Phosphate cathode, meaning someone with all of the proper patent licenses could combine the two and make a high energy-density, non-exploding laptop battery that does even better than the Li-Poly battery I'm using in my MacBook Pro right now.

Finally, here's a link to the "Safety Concerns" page of the "Battery University" site which is an excellent user's reference for Li-Ion secondary batteries, among others. And here is a link to a Valence Corp white paper that describes their LIP cells. Lastly, here is a PDF of Altair Nano's marketing material describing their claims of safety advantages their Titanium spinel material offers to commercial batteries.

But they do sell a bunch of $1500 electric mopeds, if you're interested in going that route.

There are some other vehicles out there, too -- you'll have to look for them, though. Some are only in development, like the x-cycle, while others are incredibly expensive, like the Sparrow.

Here's my suggestion.

I'm going to assume that you can get under the hood of a car, remove the engine, and essentially work on a car without killing yourself.

In that case, you probably want to get a street-legal old vw-bug or Ford Fiesta (or Yugo)... anyhow, something that is small and aerodynamic, and then convert it to electric with a $3000 conversion kit from e-volks. (They also have a $1500 conversion kit, but I'd go with the better one if I were you.) This is Wilderness Energy (which sells hub bicycle conversion kits, unfortunately also of Chinese manufacture and easily broken) expanded to automobiles.

Just... I'd go ahead and make the electric supply/recharge system separate from the vehicle, for the reason that you'll want to change it over later as you get more money.

Initially, you'll want Sealed-Lead-Acid batteries as can be had from Wal-Mart in the Bike section. They're cheap but heavy, and you string up enough of them to get whatever distance and speed you need.

But later, you'll want to convert to Lithium-ion phosphate, since it is lightweight, extremely efficient, long lasting, and doesn't blow up like a DELL.

Two sources for those are A123 and Valence.

I'm not a chemist, but I don't think that's possible.

There are already tweaked Li-Ion battery chemistries that are comparable with Li-Ion for energy density, but which the manufacturer asserts is safer than plain Li-Ion, for example, Saphion.

Yup, Check out these guys Valence. They apparently make a variant of li-ion or li-po which has reduced dangers of heat buildup in banked cells.

You'll see them in mobile phones and laptops first. They'll make it into electric vehicles in a few years.

How about in the next year?

http://www.valence.com/saphion.asp

These Phosphate Lithium Ion batteries got around the heat/explosion problems that standard Lithium Ion Cells have at high Amperes, they last longer, and they can be produced at a lower total cost.

In the last year, they've taken a good chunk of the laptop battery field, as you predicted; but I suspect this was an interim market for them since the whole point of their approach was to meet vehicular demands that have not been met technologically until now.

Faster than you've predicted, they are already powering Segway scooters, and other Niche market vehicles (forklifts, golf-carts, etc.) But the exciting part is how effective this technology has been for the Kit and Custom Car market.

This has become the battery technology of choice for high-speed vehicles. It was identified as the best option by CalCars: Modified Prius gets up to 180 Miles Per Gallon and other electric car manufacturers - and now they are the fore-runner in Toyota's search for the next generation of off-the-lot hybrids.

The big time for electric is upon us.

...And don't forget - effective Hydrogen cars will still depend on battery tech like this being mature.

I have the N-Charge II base unit and it works JUST FINE as advertised!

I use it all the time to charge my celphone, digicam, and laptop portably without having to lug around multiple power-bricks. I'm even reusing my Toshiba powerbrick from an old laptop as my stay-at-home brick to charge my Sony VAIO while I keep the Sony's brick for on-the-go.

Saved me extra laptop-brick ($50), extra digicam batt ($50), extra laptop batt ($300), extra celphone charger ($20)= $420 for $125 (valence) + $30 (low-voltage adaptor) + $20 for two tip sets= $175.

Also, more power and better flexibility than the Socket Power Pack.

Specs are sparse and more equivalent to the 65W Valence battery than the 130W, but you are very sparse on information. You're most likely not even using the expansion pack with the base unit which of course means you got half the performance. I get 4 hours out of the battery myself. No doubt even more if I ever want to add the expansion pack.

The 3 led battery display IS very uninformative, but the performance time is predictable.

This new form-factor is great for lifting one edge of the laptop up (the back) enhancing typing, and enhancing airflow underneath which you really should try out.

You COULD also just get the power-cord extender if you want to keep it inside your backpack if it's too inconvenient in the "lift-bottom" setup.

Typical of Slashdotters to comment, agree, and bitch about a product they know nothing about, but even for the reviewer to not RTFM. I guess that's typical too.

One battery company claims to make a "safe" battery that uses phosphates, not cobalt oxides in its lithium ion. They even have a video demonstration that we can slashdot.

G4from128k is a true hero in my eyes. He has just linked to a thing of pure beauty. Think of this demonstration like--like if an angel made a movie. Yes, if an angel made a movie it would look something like this.

Lithium ion batteries, so popular for their power density, are inherently unstable if they are overcharged or become too hot (about 140 F is the threshold). As a spokesperson for one battery maker said "When you heat this material up, it (can) reach an onset temperature that begins to self-heat and progresses into fire and explosion." One battery company claims to make a "safe" battery that uses phosphates, not cobalt oxides in its lithium ion. They even have a video demonstration that we can slashdot.

Lithium ion batteries, so popular for their power density, are inherently unstable if they are overcharged or become too hot (about 140 F is the threshold). As a spokesperson for one battery maker said "When you heat this material up, it (can) reach an onset temperature that begins to self-heat and progresses into fire and explosion." One battery company claims to make a "safe" battery that uses phosphates, not cobalt oxides in its lithium ion. They even have a video demonstration that we can slashdot.

umm, so how's an "LMP" lithium cell any different from the standard not-too-safe LiCoO2-cell? If i remember correctly, the reason why people still use lead-acid cells in their cars is because lithium-ion cells explode after thermal runaway (happens in 150 Celsius, usually after the cell is internally short-circuited).
The carmakers should use Saphion for cars, since the cells are made from LiFePO4. There was an Inquirer article about lithium cells, cant be arsed to search for it tho.

i hate to pick nits, but iPods and some PDA's have Lithium Ion Polymer batteries. Sadly, i don't know what properties Li-Ion Polymer batteries have verses standard Li-Ion cells, aside from the fact that Li-Ion Polymer is more of a flexible sheet rather then a AA shaped cell.

anyone have any more information? i know that the Li-Ion battery in my TiBook has seen a lot less memory effect in comparison to the Lithium Ion Polymer battery in my Clie. but then again, i keep my TiBook at a full charge most of the time, and i use my Clie off the grid a lot more than my TiBook.

Valence are another company that make Li-polymer batteries - the link is their FAQ, which is good, especially the graph halfway down.