I see several potential ones coming in the near future:
Solar and wind will be failures as they scale up. The result will be something, likely natural gas and nuclear will replace them and the costs of that failure will be a net drag on economies that invested heavily in them.
A good prediction, considering this is already happening in Europe.
The battery car thing, likewise will find itself increasingly a non-solution to transportation needs, just as railroads won't work in large nations unless heavily subsidized and forced on the population by government.
Even if fully subsidized by the government, it isn't practical to handle transportation needs.
Passenger railroads have effectively failed in the U.S. It's all government owned and run now (Amtrack). In Europe, rails pretty much all government owned and electrified now. It's more practical over there because of the shorter distances generally involved. One notable exception is the Orient Express. Roads are poorer quality (or nonexistant!) compared to the freeway system in the States. Air travel and freeways have effectively killed any chances for a practical passenger service over much of the country. That service is now relegated to commuter type service (also government run).
EVs have the HUGE disadvantage of taking a long time to charge (assuming you can find a working charger when you need it!) compared to the few minutes it takes to refuel a gasoline or diesel vehicle.
Battery technology is the SAME. The Li-ion battery 'improvements' are in manufacturing automation. It's still the same battery, storing the same joules per mole of lithium as when the battery was developed 40 years ago.
The charge/discharge rate is limited by that same electrochemistry. BOTH actions generate waste heat in the battery due to moving ions through the electrolyte barrier. This is why it takes MORE energy to charge the battery than you get by running the car.
As you have already seen, the Church of Green and the Church of Global Warming deny and discard physics, including the laws of thermodynamics that govern vehicle batteries. Their fear of CO2 is based on the same denial of physics.
Battery technology will improve incrementally,
Manufacturing techniques will improve, that's all.
The same amount of lithium is still required to store the same energy. That's locked in by the characteristics of the lithium atom itself.
Li-ion batteries are the lightest practical battery to store energy. That's what makes them so suitable for cars and portable equipment. Their fairly low internal resistance means they deliver quite a few amperes.
but won't be justifiable in situations where charging is difficult to obtain or takes too much time.
This is one of the biggest problems of EVs. Even a lot of golf courses got rid of their electric carts and went to gas because of this problem.
There are drawbacks to batteries and they aren't likely to get sufficiently better that they can remain justifiable for use in vehicles with no alternatives given.
This is the crux of it: "no alternatives given". This is the goal. It is the only way they can justify EVs...government tyranny.
The problem with batteries is you CANNOT get around chemistry and physics.
Very true.
Occasionally, I hear of talk about batteries based on sodium rather than lithium. Such a battery is three times heavier and much more dangerous (sodium metal burns as a class D fire in open air!).
Such batteries, while cheaper, are also much more inferior and much more dangerous.
