is going to go up by a factor of three. So you can either have three times today’s range with the same cost, or you can have today’s range with one-third the cost. And by the way, there are some chemistries beyond lithium-ion that are even more cost-effective and can store way more energy. So in ten years, I think we will see lots of electric cars that offer 300 to 350 miles of range and which are priced no more than today’s conventional cars. You won’t need the gasoline engine anymore, because the only reason we have gasoline engines in the [Volt] is for an emergency power supply.

This past summer, we learned that there are going to be new long-term fuel economy requirements. I know you didn’t support the CAFE standards of the 70’s. Do you think these new standards are manageable and a good idea? [54.5 mpg by 2025]
In a way they’re worse, and in a way they’re better. They’re better because they apply to all automobile companies this time. Last time, in the 70’s, when the federal government mandated a fleet average, it greatly favored the Japanese, because they were building all of the small cars, and it devastated the American producers, because we were building the big cars. The Germans don’t even bother with U.S. CAFE. They just build big cars that use a lot of fuel, and at the end of the year, NHTSA calculates how much they missed CAFE by, and they have to pay a fine. In the future, everybody has to meet the law.
     They’re worse in that they are very difficult to meet, and it is going to result in a fairly significant increase in the cost of cars, because it doesn’t matter what car company you are, everybody agrees that you cannot meet the standards without a significant degree of electrification of the car.