medium_pace wrote:
If anyone can get a 10x improvement in battery technology, which is definitely possible, then the combustion engine is dead.
Batteries pre-date the internal combustion engine, so they already had a head start, but they still have not caught up to the IC engine. Electric cars have been around for 100 years and they still cost about 50% more than a comparable IC vehicle and they have less range.
So riddle me this, you are convinced we can increase battery performance 10X from here? Why couldn't we do the same for IC?
Or maybe you don't understand the thermodynamics of either process and you are talking out of your ass?
Market forces have applied pressure to ICE performance and efficiency for much longer than they have batteries.
With ICE having won the early initial battle and becoming the dominant form of transportation (IE, not many electric cars out there), there wasn't a "killer app" for battery tech for a long time. NOW (in the last 20 years or so), we're starting to see the demand rise dramatically, as practically everything we use has some kind of battery, and we're increasingly demanding better performance and capacity.
The market will (and is) responding to that. More money is being put into battery tech and research. I really can't speak to the technical aspects, but I'm quite sure that batteries can be improved dramatically.
Think of it in reverse. If electric cars had been the standard going back 100 years, how good do you think batteries would be now? Pretty ****ing good.