And after paying a premium of thousands or tens of thousands of dollars, you're stuck with a car where replacing the batteries when they wear out will cost thousands or tens of thousands. Here in AZ, conventional lead-acid batteries fail in about 2 years, and I know they're trying to develop more durable battery technology, so it's not entirely apples to apples, but any battery will wear out eventually. I don't want to have to in effect replace the engine on my car every few years. My truck is 15 years old, has 200K miles, and is showing no sign of slowing down.
You should be happy to learn that GM is using the test track at Yuma for their Volt testing and is confident that AZ drivers will get at least 10 years from their Volt battery.
You do well to mention the battery wearing down, and that’s why I am fully for going into capacitor development, capacitors, as you may have experienced with a self-charging LED flashlight or hopefully were able to save a life with portable defibrilators, are different from batteries in being able to accumulate charge (Coloumbs) faster than batteries, as well as wearing down quite gradually over time. EStorr’s (Texas-based battery producer)promise may not have come true, but capacitors could be promising in many ways. Overall, I believe that that capacitors may be something worth pursuing right now, given how much we’ve spent on developing just the chemical batteries.