Ed Wallace:

Ogiso went on to say that most consumers want more range than that in their vehicles. And so Toyota believes that the market is still best for hybrids and fuel-celled vehicles— at least until 2025, when the production cost of long range all-electric cars should fall below that of building a hybrid electric.

The London presentation suggested that the cost of building a lithium-ion battery has fallen from $1,000 per kilowatt-hour in 2010 to around $350 today and could easily fall to under $100 per kwh within a decade. But new pressures are stimulating the next evolution of the automobile industry; for example, the German Bundesrat, the country’s federal court, resolved to ban all gasoline- and diesel-powered vehicles from Germany’s roads by 2030. (The most they can actually do is forward the resolution to the EU for action.) This follows Norway’s extremely aggressive moves to convince the public to ditch any fossil-fueled vehicle and the Netherlands’ decision to at least seriously debate the same subject. So far Norway’s motoring public has already moved in that direction: Electric cars comprised almost 50 percent of all new car sales there in September.

In the middle of these conversations Daimler announced that, to ensure that its plans to create an entire platform of new electric cars from both Smart and Mercedes become a reality in the next 10 years, it would spend up to $1 billion on new battery technology. Earlier BMW suggested that up to 25 percent of its models could be electric within the next 16 years, although that may be 75 percent fewer electrics than the fatherland will want from the Bavarian manufacturer.