Battery manufacturer Ener1 just announced that they're foreseeing an 50% drop in the price of lithium ion batteries as production increases. Where exactly this price drop will be coming from, we're not sure.
A couple of statements indicate that a lot of it will come simply from scaling up manufacturing, and that it won't happen until their dealing in hundreds of thousands of units. But they're also indicating that demand isn't likely to do anything but increase exponentially. Of course, that's what they hope, and it's my personal opinion as well. But it's certainly not guaranteed.
Ener1 has also stated that they are expecting two new development deals this year. They already provide the lithium ion batteries for Think's City Car in Europe. But the CEO is promising that these deals will be with much larger car companies. And though GM and Toyota already have their Li-ion suppliers lined up (Toyota will probably be building it's own,) there are an awful lot of car companies that still aren't sure how they're going to break into the lithium ion powered future.
Lastly, according to their calculations, this 50% reduction in li-ion battery cost will translate to a significant reduction in the cost of hybrid vehicles. They're expecting, in fact, that the time it takes for hybrids to pay for themselves will drop from 7 to around 2 years.
It's pretty likely that every new car on the road will have a lithium ion battery pack in it in a mere ten years. So I expect that their vision for increased demand isn't unwarranted. Whether there are some unseen bumps in the road, however, is an entirely different matter. But if these prices do drop the way Ener1 says they will, then the world is going to be a cleaner and more electrified place pretty soon.
