faculty
one of the faculty speakers at camp had started a company making batteries for electric cars. she was young energetic intelligent and did i mention beautiful? likely she could talk people into giving her millions. heh. more millions. batteries are kinda in the same boat as photovoltaics. they suck. currently. but they're improving on an interesting curve. it's like take your pick: one gallon of gasoline... or 100 pounds of batteries. and in five years it'll be 50 pounds of batteries. course it's not really a fair comparison. i figure you need some 5 doublings to be equivalent. 'course you don't need to be equivalent by weight to be better. the electric motor converts energy more efficiently. it doesn't need a transmission nor drive train. and we can live with quite a bit of extra weight. things get interesting after two more doublings. which if we continue tossing ever increasing amounts of money at battery r&d might be as soon as 10 years. though i wouldn't hold my breath.