Will a 2012 Leaf work as only vehicle for me?

[SanDust]

There was a recent report that battery manufacturers are quoting $450 per kwh for the 2012 year, a few years ago (2009) it was rumored GM was paying about $1000 per kwh.. if all that is true then we have had extreme price drops and still are using the good old lithium manganese spinel chemistry. We know LiFePO4 can be made even cheaper, its just a matter of economies of scales with present battery tech, no revolutionary new batteries are needed, but they will come anyways.

Not really such fast price drops. The Volt pack costs about $11.2K with the batteries making up about $8K of that. So $500/kW. (I think the $1K/kWh come from the idea of a "usable" kW. GM was going to use half the pack so the price per kWh doubled.) Given this $450/kWh seems a bit high. Not a lot but a bit.

Note that if the next generation "layered-layered" batteries can store 50% more energy that's about a 50% price drop because the cost of the materials doesn't change appreciably. (Assuming we don't get the more optimistic "almost double").