Another elephant in Michael's room is how to recycle all of those batteries when they are spent.
I believe that most of the batteries contain metals and other products that can be recycled and/or repurposed, and of course on a large scale, this would happen.
I have a very old book, (c)1935 titled "The Triumph of an Idea: The Story of Henry Ford". In it, it describes in great detail old Henry's material sourcing, his reasons for vertical integration (before the term was invented) of maintaining control over quality and delivery. The author also describes the Ford corporate recycling center (though the term wasn't yet invented either) where spent cars of yesteryear were disassembed and most of the materials were reused in some fashion. As I re-read parts of this book, I wonder if we've learned anything in the ensuing 82 years since publication, since it's all been done before.
As for fuel cells, Raymond, what happened is this: they
need hydrogen to generate electricity, they don't
generate hydrogen "as you go". But the challenge was, is, and continues to be that hydrogen is rarely found in nature; it's usually bound to something like oxygen: H2O, water for example. [Nearly all the hydrogen currently manufactured in the USA comes from fossil fuels.] And that bond is tough to break, and takes energy to do so. Now, if there were a great way to generate hydrogen by electrolysis of water that didn't consume more energy than it generated, we'd be set. That's the holy grail.
Some years ago, there was some research done on this, and a method to do was was developed. It hasn't gone anywhere, however. The research was from Professor Jerry Woodall
http://engineering.ucdavis.edu/biographies/jerry-woodall/ formerly of Purdue, now at UC Davis. The process is called gallium aluminum hydrolysis.
http://www.purdue.edu/uns/x/2007a/070515WoodallHydrogen.htmlIf only...
