Toshiba’s SCiB lithium-ion battery which is to be used in the Honda Fit EV can be 95% recharged in 18 minutes.

Drive 200 miles, charge 20 minutes, drive 190, charge 20, drive 190. Now you’ve done 580 miles with two short stops. 175 mile range gets you a 500 mile day with two stops.

You could do the same drive with an ICEV with only one refueling stop but I don’t think the extra stop would be meaningful for almost all drivers. Even averaging 60MPH it’s going to take you close to ten hours to make that 580 trip and most people would be fine with stopping twice to eat, stretch their legs, etc.

Price.

Right now if you buy a Nissan Leaf at the full price of $32,500 and a generic 28MPG ICEV for $20,000 at the end of 12 years you will have spent about $8,000 more with the ICEV.

That’s with no subsidies for the Leaf.

Comparing the Leaf and a 50MPG Toyota Prius at $23,500 over 12 years the
Leaf will cost you about $3,500 more. That’s assuming $4/gallon gas
increasing at a 4% rate of inflation. There’s a good probability that gas
prices will rise much faster than 4% which would wipe out that $3,500 Prius
advantage.

So, only a high MPG, low $20k ICEV is now cheaper to purchase and own than
the Leaf. But the problem is, not many buyers will spend the extra money
up front to save money in the long term. We will need subsidies for a
while to bring the price of batteries down to where the price of EVs is
closer to ICEVs. We need to make sure that the monthly payment is the same
or a bit lower.

In my first example, the $20k 28MPG ICEV, the first year monthly payments
would be about $150 higher, dropping to about $100 by year five (five year
loan). Starting at year six the Leaf would save the owner more than $150
per month and that would rise to over $200 per month by year 12. But many
people are going to look at the first five years of costs and pay a lot
less attention to the last seven during which they would save significant
money.

– Range: The new EV cars must have at least the same range than fuel cars.
– Time of charge: Around 5 minutes.
– Price: EV cars should cost the same during its lifetime (vehicle + energy)

Another approach is to use a small trailer holding either a large battery or a small generator and fuel tank. Rent one at one end of the interstate and drop it off at the other.

But then there’s the possibility that we’re only short years from high mileage, affordable batteries and all of this will become moot. A 200+ mile range plus enough rapid (Level 3) chargers would do the job. I suspect those inside the industry have a good idea about what is coming down the tubes and we’re not seeing much move toward swap-able battery packs. Tesla and Renault, largely for the Israeli and Danish(?) markets are the exception.

However, considering that the use of this type of battery in state-of-the-art ultra-light electrical aircraft would virtually extend the annonced range by large, the motorcar’s monopoly in individual macromobility is deemed to be shifted over to the personal aircraft in the not too far future, with consequent geostrategic, political, economic, and environmental fallouts likely to trigger the most dramatic change of paradigm in human history.

With millions of compact motorcars equipped with this type of batteries, the whole electric motor/battery assembly would indeed become affordable even to small UL aircraft manufacturing companies.

And since fully automated flight is mandatory for the avent of massively popularized individual aeromobility, each personal aircraft might as well serve as a public transport module, thus revolutionizing human mobility at large.

With the ultimate extension of the motorcar monopoly into Russia, China, and India (let alone Africa), the human society is facing the perspective of heading straight into the wall — not because of the motorcar in its own right, as it is tending towards zero emission, but because of its footprint in terms of ever more tentacular road networks, and last but not least because of its very restricted choice of destinations versus individual aeromobility based on vertical take-off and landing rotary-wing aircraft.

There must be a lot of multi-car households where one or more of the cars just do shorter daily work/school commutes. Give them the option of an EV priced more like an econobox and that can be ‘fueled’ for next to nothing and people are going to snap them up.

The critical elements, seems to me, are safe and fast enough to scoot down the highway when that’s part of the daily commute. Two adults or one adult and two children’s seats. And a bit of room for groceries.

Drive 200, stop <20 minutes for an 80% recharge, drive 160, stop <20min, drive 160.

That's a 500 mile driving day with only two short stops. With a standard gas vehicle you're going to stop once for gas. And then there are those other needs.

There shouldn't be any exotic materials in solid state batteries. Automated factories should kick them out at a decent cost once systems get in place. There's a sweet spot where enough range meets the cost/weight factor and I suspect it's lower than 600 miles.

BTW, this development started floating around the internet several days ago, starting on some fairly obscure sites. I suspect we shouldn't get too excited about it until Toyota has something official to say.