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Mazda Says Its Upcoming Gas-Powered Cars Will Emit Less CO2 Than Electric Cars
cartechboy writes: "One of the arguments for electric cars is that we are reducing greenhouse gases and emitting less CO2 than vehicles with an internal combustion engine. But Mazda says its next-generation SkyActiv engines will be so efficient, they'll emit less CO2 than an electric car. In fact, the automaker goes so far as to say these new engines will be cleaner to run than electric cars. Is it possible? Yes, but it's all about the details. It'll depend on the test cycles for each region. Vehicles are tested differently in Europe than in the U.S., and that variation could make all the difference when it comes to these types of claims. At the end of the day whether future Mazdas with gasoline-powered engines are cleaner than electric cars or not, every little bit in the effort to reduce our carbon emissions per mile is a step in the right direction, right?"
Or do they mean in the "yeah but guess where that electricity comes from, a coal-burning plant" sense?
It's not like CO2 is some unwanted and avoidable by-product of burning hydrocarbons in oxygen. It's the main product of combustion, along with water. So the only real way to reduce CO2 emissions per mile is get more miles per gallon of fuel. Is that what they're promising?
So where is the CO2 coming from? And the coal plants are still running whether I use an electric car or not, so the net total is still higher with gasoline.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
The important thing is that we stop using non renewable energy. The CO2 problem will take care of itself. And it won't hurt my feelings to see Big Oil implode.
And let's not also inspect the electricity generation plants for CO2. Some use Oil, some use coal, some use hydro or wind power, some use nuclear power, and everyone knows nuclear waste produces no CO2.
A car which emits electric cars...
Burning gasoline releases c02. Solar recharging is possible right now.
Mazda abuses copyright to stop 3rd parties from publishing manuals. Can't get a Haynes or Chilton manual for any Mazda newer than about 1995. When I learned this about them, I decided never to own another Mazda.
They aren't the only automaker doing that. I don't know which other ones are pulling that stunt, but I'll certainly check before buying a particular brand.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
Where I live, the hipsters too cheap to buy Priuses end up with Mazda 3s or VW Jettas... vehicles that are too underpowered to even get to 65 in a reasonable time, causing traffic jams all over freeways. This is amusing... being too snooty to buy US... and they wonder where the jobs are when they graduate.
Oh, the foreign companies "making" cars are not all producing vehicles. Some import the vehicles sans mirrors, and a "factory" here in the US attaches those... for a Made in USA label (this is how some van makers get around the "chicken tax".) In reality, it just means that jobs that paid a living wage are replaced by minimum wage workers. Great for savings for an offshore corporation, doesn't bode well for people who desire a future other than competing with others for that Starbucks barista job.
Its not a storage mechanism. Its a transportation mechanism. Batteries are a storage mechnism for electricity.
Here in Québec, with lots of hydroelectricity, I doubt very much that this gasoline engine will emit less CO2 per mile than an all electric vehicle.
"Sockets are the standard networking API, also useful for stopping your eyes from falling onto your cheeks" zeromq.org
I agree that every movement towards lower carbon emissions are a good think, but some steps have more long-term potential than others. Consider that the average vehicle has a lifetime of 20+ years on the road, and of course assuming relatively cheap replacement/refurbished batteries are available to give electric vehicles a similar lifespan:
I buy a high-efficiency gasoline vehicle today, and as wear and tear and poor tuning take their toll the carbon-mileage will fall, and it'll keep falling as long as the car is rolling.
I buy an electric vehicle, it draws it's power from the grid, so as grid infrastructure moves towards more carbon-neutral generation the carbon-milage will keep improving over the lifetime of the vehicle.
Of course that battery assumption could be flawed. And it may be that the grid stays as horribly carbon-producing as today for the next 20 years. So the question is complicated, but I'm betting the lifetime emissions of an EV are probably lower for the same milage. Then again I'm not about to complain about high-efficiency gasoline cars if they can be made affordable and appealing enough for the masses. The faster we tackle this problem the better, and sitting around waiting for EV technology to become affordable enough for people other than bankers and trust-fund hipsters doesn't help anything.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Well, maybe more work could be done to develop hydrogen as a fuel cell vehicle. Then, you would really and truly have a much cleaner solution.
Mazda admits they haven't been spending nearly as much as they should in their electric car R&D.
Mazda Says Its Upcoming Gas-Powered Cars Will Feed Less Plant Life Than Electric Cars
As usual what most over look is gas cars once on the road are very hard to reduce (or even just keep the levels the same) emmisions, but with electric cars you can continue to reduce emmisions of the plants that produce the electricity.
When companies pick and choose their statistics so blatantly and make a claim like this, it really makes me trust the company that much less.
You mean as opposed to Murican' innovation?
Go Murica! Hooaah!
Gee...
So the f ing hippies were right and stupid a holes have been standing in the way of progress the entire time?
If governments can tell you what car to drive and how much CO2 it can emit, why not tell people what they can eat, how much animal protein, and put a methane tax on cows and pigs? All this concern over cars and driving and global warming but eating meat seems to be worse than driving a Hummer. http://www.scientificamerican....
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
I suspect that an electric car would pass that test easily; I'm less confident in the Mazda vehicle.
Protoplasm. Quiet Protoplasm. I like quiet protoplasm.
The reason most people want electric cars has nothing to do with how much CO2 they emit.
If you have your electric car connected to solar panels (becoming increasingly common as they are cheap as dirt) then any attempt to compare the CO2 as generated by a fossil fueled car is bogus.
Maybe if the power in your hood comes from coal and crude oil then maybe yes. But many people are Nuclear, Solar, Wind, and Hydro powered. Plus I suspect that people in areas with plenty of green power are more likely to drive an electric car. People in an oil producing area are more likely to not only drive a normal fossil fueled car but actually a diesel powered pick up truck.
A major point of electric cars is to shift the pollution somewhere else other than the city streets where people are breathing in the pollution for a lot of vehicles in a tight space. Everything else is gravy.
"every little bit in the effort to reduce our carbon emissions per mile is a step in the right direction, right?"
Not necessarily, due to induced demand:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand
The most important thing is to get rid of the dependency on crude oil. You'd be very naive if you think that prices in the energy sector are determined by demand-from-fuel-users and supply-from-fuel-providers in an open market. Providers are an oligarchy, and "demand" (in the market) is largely driven by speculators. If anyone in the middle east lets out a loud fart, the oil price jumps by 5 bucks a barrel.
The following need to go hand in hand: the dirt-cheap production of energy, dirt-cheap transportation of energy, dirt-cheap storage of energy and dirt-cheap distribution of energy. Unfortunately for now, crude-based products still win.
Don't worry, when civilization collapses, I'll rape and pillage your daughters first.
I didn't see anything that could possibly have come from a Thermal Engineer. -1 Misleading
Get two hermetically sealed rooms. One with this new Mazda, and one with an all-electric car. Both cars are on roller ramps. Just to be fair, the Mazda can have it's air-intake piped in from outside.
Then grab the CEO of Mazda and give him this choice of 'driving' 20 miles in either the Mazda or the electric car.
Simple... Effective.
...are not correlated like Mazda is claiming. Stoichiometry dictates how much CO2 a 100% efficient engine will emit by burning gasoline.
Awesome! Efficient gas powered cars. Another constructive argument to continue fracking.
Look, lets say that it works (which they acknowledge that they have issues still). Then it will ALWAYS emit CO2 and other pollution.
OTOH, electric cars' pollution is based on where its electricity comes from. As coal power plants die off, the CO2 emissions per KWH will drop. ANd this WILL CONTINUE.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Someone told you a whopper of a lie. Let's think this through.
6kWh costs about 60 cents.
Until the recent price hike, through the 1980s and 1990s, the retail price of gas was about $1, including tax of 38 cents.
Net of 38 cents tax, the gas stations got 62 cents.
Essentially, someone told you that for twenty years all of the gas stations, the refineries, the drlling companies, the pipelines, etc. were all giving the gas away for free - you were ONLY paying for the tax the electricity required to refine it. Wow, those oil companies sure are generous, giving us all trillions of dollars worth of gas for free and getting nothing out of it, just losing trillions of dollars year after year.
Your post is remarkably accurate, for someone who thinks electric cars are the future. As you correctly point out, it assumes some incredible new battery technology. Such a thing could happen one day. Today's batteries are certainly better than the ni-cads of 30 years ago. They aren't that much more recycable, though.
As you said, there's also the huge question of where this electricity comes from. Since we don't have any more 100 mile stretches of mountain wilderness we want to destroy, we can't build a significant number of new hydroelectric plants. Solar is good for heating, but solar electric is a sick joke, so to get a huge amount of zero carbon electricity, that means nuclear. MAYBE we can get that done now that famous environmentalists, including the founder of Greenpeace, are saying it's definitely the way to go. The problems standing in the way of nuclear are political problems, not technical problems, and those political roadblocks are getting a lot smaller.
Of course all of that is "maybe some day". Maybe some day we can have cars that run on unicorn farts, as they say.
Stop using coal to generate most of your electricity.
And most cars spend nearly all their time sitting around somewhere. Some of that time would be at times when there is not so much demand for electricity, so they could be charged from electricity generated by solar, wind and tidal sources. (which are not so suitable for peak demand since the sun isnt always shining etc.
Wow - that's a short attention span, only one sentence.
Indeed. The US car makers being well-known for their "gas guzzlers", so-called because of their wonderful efficiency ratings....
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
Please load up the atmosphere with more co2, what's there isn't enough, it's freezing out there, so much that the libtards had to regroup and call it global climate change instead of global warming, and global warming from the pending ice age of the 1970s.
You have to ask yourself why the only solution for co2 in the atmosphere is a money grab like taxes and cap and trade.
http://journalistsresource.org...
Well under a life cycle of under 100k miles there's no benefit among electric or Diesel. The source of contamination of electric cars is fabrication itself and the batteries. http://journalistsresource.org... I'd rather go for a bike or a velomobile for short trips less than 10 km. Bike is faster in some cities than cars in that range GIYBF. I'll buy a sportswagon for the rest of tasks (gasoline, because i'll be using it for long trips). http://www.lowtechmagazine.com...
Crude becomes gasoline (and other stuff) in two stages.
(1) Fractional distillation does the initial bulk separation
(2) Catalytic cracking of longer chain hydrocarbons into gasoline (i.e. octane).
I think that cat cracking is much more energy intensive, so some (probably most) octane comes from a more energy intensive method.
I come here for the love
Actually, Ford was the majority owner of Mazda until 2010, and responsible for most of the success the company has had (specifically the Mazda 3, often one of the highest rated cars in its class)
And shame on you Mazda for not making the diesel version of the Mazda 3 available in North America.
Actually, from everything I've heard recycling current-gen batteries is cheaper than building them from fresh ore, the question is only whether more affordable battery technology will allow electric cars to remain on the street as long as gasoline vehicles. And from one perspective it doesn't even matter that much - the energy embodied in the car itself is minimal compared to the energy consumed in operation, so as long as the car isn't on the road consuming gasoline it's a net win for CO2 reduction. The loss is only in the resale value of the car, and to all the people who are only willing to spend a grand or two on an old car.
>solar electric is a sick joke
How so? It needs better battery technology to really take off, but there are some really interesting options on the horizon, and some like Aquion are almost to market. And there are already nations getting a major portion of their total power from it (Germany gets ~40% I think), and in the US southwest it's already cheap enough that with electricity at $0.11/kWh a grid-tied solar installation will pay for itself in 5-7 years (~10 without subsidies), and then provide free power for another decade or two.
Nuclear is also definitely an option, it can theoretically be done safely, we just need to work out economic incentive structures that don't encourage dangerous cost-cutting at every opportunity. Sealed modular reactors offer some interesting potential in that direction, and it sounds like they can probably be built new for about the same average cost as an equivalent thermal energy worth of coal.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
I haven't heard the term "gas guzzler" since, oh, 1995.
It would seem to me that Mazda are only peddling this BS because they don't have a viable EV. EVs are simpler than IC vehicles to manufacture so presumable use less CO2 to build and EVs produce zero CO2 when running so that only leaves the electricity source. Where I come from, New Zealand, pretty much all power generation is CO2 free, mainly hydro and geothermal, and I can chose a supplier with only green generation sources. Therefore if I use an EV I can do so CO2 free.
Sorry Mazda but this idea is about as credible as the hydrogen powered BS that used to make the media but never amounted to anything. I bet in a few years time nobody will even remember this distraction, and if Mazda doesn't pull finger in getting an EV to market then in a few more years no one will remember Mazda either.
Dams aren't the only source of hydro electric power. I believe nuclear is the best alternative and, atm, the only long term viable solution that currently works and can produce the power we require.
Bring back the rotary!!!
One of the only two manufacturers that isn't gimmicking it up (Subaru being the other) by reducing weight, friction rather than jumping on other tech trends and you're crapping on them. Yay Slashdot.
...but I'll be the first to stand up and say Mazda makes some fine cars. Between the Germans and the Japanese, American auto makers are just the running joke.
I guess it depends on your definition of success. If it's volume sales, OK, I'll go along with that. If it's innovation, no, Mazda did more of that through the 1970s before Ford. Ford has had mixed success with others, too. Aston Martin might not have achieved the quality or volume without Ford, and that's really what they lacked. So I think Ford left Aston better off than they would have been (had they even continued to exist). But Ford nearly ruined Jaguar with their X Type and S Type half-Lincolns, complete misunderstanding of Jaguar's potential market, and repeated quashing of F Type development.
I really enjoy talking to you. It's great to talk to someone who is reasonably well informed, thinks things through, argues intelligently, but argues the other side of an question from what I believe to be correct.
Nuclear is also definitely an option, it can theoretically be done safely, we just need to work out economic incentive structures that don't encourage dangerous cost-cutting at every opportunity. Sealed modular reactors offer some interesting potential in that direction
That's an interesting and important point. We know that nuclear CAN be safer than the alternatives, history proves that. It's important that the structural environment promotes safety.
(For anyone reading this who hasn't studied it, death and injury rates for nuclear are far below any other major energy source).
solar electric is a sick joke
How so? ... there are some really interesting options on the horizon, and some like Aquion are almost to market.
There certainly are people pitching what sound like really interesting ideas. That's true today and it was true in the 1990s, the 1980s, the 1970s, the 1960s, and the 1950s. The same crowd has been promising that practical solar electric is "just around the corner" for over sixty years. I don't believe them anymore. At this point, I'll believe it when I see it. It might happen. Unfortunately, the big problem for solar is that the earth spins, meaning significant solar is available for about six hours per day. Solar will work a lot better when the earth stops spinning. On the other hand, electric cars _already_ require batteries, so if solar makes sense for any major use, it's for cars.
If solar panels were about eight times more efficient, cars could have solar panels on the roof which charge the battery during the sunny part of the day. That would be awesome. Unfortunately, if they were eight times more efficient, that would be 160% efficiency. Perpetual motion only requires 100%. This tells us that solar panels on cars may work shortly after perpetual motion works. That's not the only similarity between solar electric and perpetual motion.
And there are already nations getting a major portion of their total power from it (Germany gets ~40% I think)
Just under 1% of their total power (DOE), by doubling the cost of electricity to pay for huge subsidies.
The "40%?" probably came to mind because they are getting about 4% of their ELECTRICITY from solar.
Of course you're correct to look at "total power", not "electricity", because everyone switched from gas cars to electric cars, you'd need ten times as much electricity. It gets worse - they get a very specific 4% from solar - the 4% that occurs around noon, at certain locations. Since the earth spins, solar is simply impossible to get most of the time. That sucks, because otherwise solar would be great.
and in the US southwest it's already cheap enough that with electricity at $0.11/kWh a grid-tied solar installation will pay for itself in [doesn't matter] (~10 without subsidies), and then provide free power for another decade or two.
Thank you for acknowledging that making your neighbor pay for it via subsidies doesn't make it more cost-effective. In the context of providing for our nation's energy needs, we can't all subsidize each other, so your 10 year figure is the one that matters. Along with the subsidies for installing solar, grid-tied also has significant subsidies on what the power company is forced to pay the person who has the solar.
The problem, again, is the peaky nature of solar - it provides power for a few hours on sunny days, only. In some areas of California, they have to shunt power to the ground on sunny afternoons, throwing the power away. The power company is spending a little bit of money to get rid of that extra power, while being forced to pay full retail price for it. Of course you've got various tax c
Actually, if you're looking at a 20-year payback you're well into the realm of fully off-grid solar, no subsidies needed. Consider, that 10-year pay-off on a 20-30 year system means amortized solar power is currently somewhere between 1/2 and 1/3 as expensive as the coal and natural gas based energy generation and distribution, and it's only the current expense of power storage that makes solar at all unfeasible as a complete replacement. I have a friend who just recently built himself a off-grid solar power system for a couple grand - nothing huge, but more than enough to power a full-sized refrigerator, lights, music system and computer. He has a bit of an issue if he loses sunlight for more than a few days, but that only happens here a few times a year, and he could solve that problem easily enough if he was willing to pay for a couple more batteries. If you're willing to get efficient it actually takes very little electricity to power an average home (or hunting cabin).
Meanwhile Aquion is well past the "pie in the sky" stage with their stationary salt-water based batteries, and are busy building the first factory to manufacture their relatively cheap and non-toxic batteries (roughly the same cost as lead-acid, with at least 10x the lifespan). They've also received investment from Bill Gates, and while I'm not a big fan, he does tend to be a pretty canny investor - his backing suggests they have both a workable technology and business model. If they can live up to their promises then solar will become fully viable practically overnight - they will have reduced the amortized cost of power storage by 90%, making it only an incidental expense in fully buffered solar power systems.
And of course there's also thermal-solar-electric systems which, by using a sufficiently massive intermediate thermal stage (usually molten salt), can deliver electricity around the clock. They still have an issue when faced with prolonged overcast periods, but there's plenty of places everywhere in the world where that isn't really an issue, and the technology for long-range superconducting power transmission is rapidly becoming generally viable.
And as you point out aside from a few specialty applications solar on cars is just stupid - in cities you'll rarely get good solar exposure, and except for in winter you really don't want it anyway, even at 100% efficiency your panels will still be missing all the energy that goes through the windows and creates a sauna. Plus any little body ding is going to render a fair sized chunk of solar panel useless, unless far more expensive power systems are used. It makes far more sense to build solar on the tops of buildings and just charge the cars from that. Automotive batteries are a different challenge than stationary power-buffering batteries (which seems to be where most of the major R&D is focused right now), but there is some interesting work being done on that front as well. For the time being though we're probably stuck on lithium-based batteries, which is unfortunate, but does mean that electric cars are only gradually being adopted, allowing for plenty of time for various charging-station options to be explored, which is important because unless I'm very much mistaken most people don't keep their car in a garage, which means they can't use the handy little garage-wall chargers, and having the nations sidewalks criss-crossed with extension cords isn't a viable option either.
Where Germany is concerned, I think you're mistaken, but it's not worth going digging, so for the sake of argument I'll assume you're correct. But even at 4% you're confusing two concepts - 4% of total power generation is very different than 4% of noon-time power usage. Even in the extreme case of providing 100% of power consumption for 4% of the day, you're still loking at a 4% reduction in total energy generated from other sources.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Fuel efficiency is an average over many kinds of driving. If one's driving skews toward the uses where electrics are especially good (stop and go urban driving) and away from uses where internal combustion engines are at their best (highway driving), the electric car will produce much less pollution.
The electric car has the advantage of removing the pollution from the point of use. This is important for city use; concentration of pollutants in a small densely populated area is much more of a public health problem than pollutants in remote areas.
If pollutants are produced on an industrial scale (power plants) it is easier to deploy mitigation technologies like exhaust scrubbing and carbon sequestering.
The CO2 profile of the electric car is likely to improve over time as the power grid shifts toward use of renewable energy sources. The gasoline powered car is what it is, and may get worse over time if petroleum production moves to higher-impact sources such as tar sands.
Finally, the electric car is likely to have a longer service life. We don't have enough data yet on electric cars, but the record of things like electrified trains and trolleys compared to diesel trains and buses suggests it. Longer vehicle life means fewer resources used to produce new vehicles. Major exception: the batteries. We need to work on low-impact ways to recycle battery materials. Developing batteries with a longer lifetime - I don't just mean more energy storage but also more charge cycles - should be a priority.
Mazda's improvements to internal combustion technology have value. They may be a more responsible choice for some car owners. But there will be many car owners for whom an electric car makes more environmental sense.
Since I couldn't reliably remember the _exact_ numbers for Germany I checked another source before posting. I was thinking about 5% of electricity, 1% of energy. Double checking, the report said slightly lower than that. The most reliable report was 3% of electricity in 2011.
> you're still loking at a 4% reduction in total energy generated from other sources.
Yes! Well, 4% of ELECTRICITY, 1% of ENERGY. As it turns out, hydro can provide 5% or so, as can geothermal, and wind about the same. So combined that's a 10%-20% reduction, which is great. A 10%-20% reduction is very significant, and it's real.
Knowing that solar, hyro, geo, and wind can cover 10%-20%, we then have to select stable, reliable sources for the other 80%-90%. I say stable because wind and solar both are available sometimes, so you need another source to use when it's cloudy, or not windy, or too windy. That doesn't mean you don't use wind on the windy days, of course. If you don't have to burn as much natural gas on the windy days, that's great. Between hydro, geo, wind, and solar, I rank their usefulness roughly as follows:
1. Hydroelectric
2. Wind
3. Geothermal (great in California, where plate tectonics makes it available).
4. Non-electric solar (solar heating etc.)
65. Solar electric.
The "6" in "65" is not a typo - wind and hydro are so much more reasonable than solar electric that the list needs a big space between them.
> But even at 4% you're confusing two concepts - 4% of total power generation is very different than 4% of noon-time power usage.
Clearly my wording was unclear. Germany gets 4% of their electricity (1% of their power) from solar.
My point is that they can not, in this solar system, expand that to 80% by building twenty times as many solar farms.
They can get 4%, but it's a _specific_ 4%. You can't use solar power in the morning when people are getting ready for work, or at dinner time, or all night long, no_matter_how_many_panels_you_buy.
> They've also received investment from Bill Gates, and while I'm not a big fan, he does tend to be a pretty canny investor
The Google founders and their friends are similarly not stupid, and they lost half a billion to yet another solar electric "get investors, then go declare bankruptcy while the top execs flee with the cash" scheme. Barak Obama, while not the smartest president, isn't stupid, yet he's well known for dropping billions on "just around the corner" solar companies that keep folding. It's a well-refined pitch that's been run since the 1890s, so they've had time to refine the pitch to work on even intelligent marks.
Nice way to completely ignore the advances in battery technology. Yes, solar or wind alone can't provide steady, much less demand-following power production. But with sufficiently cheap battery technology, they don't have to. They just have to supply average power consumption. And it's not like Aquion is standing alone - there's lots of other battery technologies on the horizon. And thermal-solar changes things drastically as well, making use of thermal batteries rather than electric.
As for Obama - spending other people's money is always easy - politics and money-shuffling have a history going back long before the founding of our nation, and quite often the one giving the money has no expectation that it would net the claimed returns - the point is to give certain groups money, not get anything obvious (to the public) for it. I don't know that that was the case here, but I'm inclined to believe it.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Really?.... Really? Electric cars DONT HAVE TAILPIPES! This statement is stupid. How dumb does Mazda Corp think we are ?!?!?!?
I already said more than once that batteries HAVE been getting better. I also said cars are possibly the best candidate for solar electric BECAUSE THEY ALREADY HAVE BATTERIES. For powering homes and businesses? Have you compared the power draw of an air conditioner, a hair dryer, and other everyday items vs. even the best batteries?
You can do that math if you want, but something like $200,000 of batteries would power your home for a day. Those $200,000 batteries will then die in 3-5 years and need to be replaced. Since I'm not going to spend $70,000 / year on batteries, yes I'm ignoring that possibility. If and when batteries get to be thousands of times better, we can talk about that.
Thanks for checking the current prices and doing the math. It looks like my guesstimate was off by exactly an order of magnitude. At $20K, you're looking at $583 per month in battery costs to keep them fresh (3 year life) or $333 per month in batteries if you're okay using them after they've become less effective and reliable (5 years).
I could handle $5.83 in battery replacement costs (plus $5.12 in government mandated recycling fees), so if and when costs drop by 99%, that'll work. You have much more faith in that than I do. Since the 1800s, we've advanced from lead acid (240 wh/$) to lithium and NiMh (390 wh/$), a 62% improvement in 150 years.
In fairness we haven't really had a lot of incentive to develop better batteries. Electric vehicles in the 1800s could have driven development, but the chemistry of the era probably wasn't really up to the challenge, and the cars were replaced relatively quickly by the invention of the internal combustion engine. And after that - well, lead-acid was perfectly capable of handling the short bursts of extremely high power needed to start a car to get the alternator going, and the electronics that needed power were themselves so large that alkaline batteries were plenty cheap and energy-dense (and they themselves represented 2x the energy/mass, and 4x the energy/volume of lead-acid). Even in the 80s and early 90s a few AAs would power your walkman/CD player for weeks, maybe months. I still only have to replace the batteries in my TI85 calculator once every few years. NiCads and NiMHs were mostly a response to the environmental movement, seeking to eliminate the massive flow of battery waste into landfills by providing a rechargeable alternative, and actually represented a decrease in capacity. It's only in the last couple decades as increasingly tiny and power-hungry devices have entered the world that there's been a significant market for high-power rechargable batteries.
And as the research has heated up we have lots of new technologies being developed. Just a few average values from Wikipedia:
Tech -- Wh/kg -- Wh/L -- Wh/$
Lead-acid -- 35 -- 68 -- 6.5
Alkaline -- 85 -- 250 -- 7.7
Ni-Cad -- 50 -- 100 -- 1.9
NiMH -- 55 -- 220 -- 2.8
L-ion-polymer -- 165 -- 300 -- 4
Ni-Fe -- 50 -- ??? -- 6.1 ---(50+ year lifespan, low toxicity)
Thin-film lithium -- 300 -- 959 -- ???
Lithium-air -- 2000 -- 2000 -- ???
Sodium-ion -- 50(?) -- 75(?) -- 3-6(?) (Aquion - cheap, long lifespan, and absence of rare or toxic materials, values estimated from public info)
Most of the stuff beyond polymers hasn't reached market yet (Ni-Fe's were used in OLPC, Aquion currently producing only 60 batteries per day while building factory), but it's pretty obvious that lead-acid and alkaline trump the broadly available competition by most standards - it's only in mobile applications that Li-poly's lower weight is an advantage to offset its higher cost and dangerous volatility.
Oh, and just FYI stationary lead acid batteries typically don't become notably less reliable with age (at least not until very near end-of-life), their power capacity simply degrades. And while 5-8 years is a typical lifespan for an automotive battery, stationary designs are typically closer to 20. Maybe half those numbers if you want to remain somewhere near the original capacity.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.