Back to battery technology.
There is a central issue in batteries, and it is immutable. It's called chemistry. It is a simple fact that there are theoretical limits to how much power can be stored chemically, and current battery technology comes very close to those limits. Batteries are chemical engines, in effect, and the power yielded by any given chemical reaction is easily measured. In addition, each charge/discharge cycle results in a certain proportion of the chemical reactants recombining in one or more of the possible reaction paths which is NOT rechargeable/reversible, and the batteries performance degrades over time.
Frankly, to make electcrically powered vehicles practical, the only technology now in development which holds much promise is fuel cells. Great advances have been made in those in recent years - one of the greatest being the development of fuel cells which can utilize carbon based fuels which are readily available, distribution infrastuctures already exist for, and which enormously increase fuel cells useability. Hydrogen is NOT a good fuel - the energy derived is low per unit, the gas requires expensive and difficult to implement technology too handle, and you still have to make the power used to produce the hydrogen gas, usually by electrochemical disassociation. In addition, hydrogen gas will leak through anything, even solid metals.
What is needed is a practical way to utilize zero-point vacuum energy. That's coming (it has already been laboratory demonstrated), but as to exactly when, it's anybodies guess.
I'm 52 years old - since I first became interested in energy systems, and alternative energy production methodologies, fusion power has always been "10-15 years from practicality". That has been 40 years now, and fusion is still "10-15 years" from implementation. Petrochemical and solid carbon based fuels (coal, mostly) are the relatively mature technologies, along with fission reactor systems. Each has its drawbacks, each has its costs, and here in the US, each causes NIMBY outcries anytime a new power generation station is proposed.
Yet, implementing electric vehicle systems, using currently available tech, will ENORMOUSLY increase the demand for electricity, which must come from somewhere. Don't tell me solar can handle the load demand - it cannot. In fact, if you look at the energy costs to produce solar cells vs the power they will produce over their projected lifespans in most environments, they are net energy consumers. There are ways to vastly improve those yeilds, and make them net energy producers, but such requires the implementation of a massive investment in problematic technologies. I'll leave that discussion to another time.
Face it - hydrocarbon using "engines", be they internal combustion, external combustion, or electrochemical reaction, are the best available for transportation purposes. HOW they are to be used is the real question. Personal automobiles, for almost all purposes, can be made that are ENORMOUSLY more efficient. So can "alternative" transportation methodologies. The fact is, the modern bicycle is far and away the single most efficient personal transportation system ever devised, bar none. Well built, they are more efficient than walking. Even using a gas engine as an "assist", they remain vastly more efficient than cars.
So - keep on MOTORING!
