Just to follow up on Kevin’s post below: One flaw in the battery plan is the assumption that battery prices will come down as fast as prices came down for silicon chips.

Tesla, an electric car competitor, is betting on the batteries becoming cheaper, too, but the NY Times doubts their projections:

Elon Musk, the chief executive of Tesla, said his company would benefit from what he called “a weak Moore’s Law,” referring to the 8 percent annual improvements in the price performance of lithium-ion batteries. But 8 percent, compounded, would bring too few benefits, too late to Tesla: it would take nine years to halve the price of its battery pack. . .

There’s a bigger problem with the batteries, however. For years we’ve heard about “Peak Oil” — now, get ready for “Peak Lithium.” From The New Republic’s Vine:

That means plug-in hybrids and electric cars still look like the cleanest, surest way to end our dependence on oil, though lest anyone think that’s entirely cost-free from a sustainability standpoint, the BBC had a recent piece on analysts who are fretting about whether there’s enough lithium in the world to make all those advanced car batteries. (One official from Mitsbuishi, [SIC] which is unveiling an electric car soon, expects lithium demand to outstrip supply in less than ten years, unless new reserves are brought online.) Chile, for one, has been dubbed the Saudi Arabia of lithium—a light metal that’s most easily harvested from the brine under salt flats—but the world’s largest reserves may be in Bolivia. Yet Bolivia’s president, Evo Morales, isn’t terribly keen on welcoming in foreign mining companies to exploit the area, which could become a bone of contention for electric-car makers trying to keep battery prices down. Never a dull moment in the resource wars…

Memo to Governor Palin: Ask a geologist how much lithium there is in ANWR. Mine, baby mine!