How would technology adoption of Lithium Air battery work?

I want to have a world when humans got serious about global warming and succeeded in making Lithium Air battery work. Since the lithium air has same potential energy density as gas, and electric engine is simpler and more efficient industries rush to adopt it. People are also thrilled with possibility to not spend money on gas and use solar to charge their vehicles.

Is my technology adoption cycle plausible:

1. Experimental vehicles only, gets lot of press but nothing concrete
2. Battery is too cumbersome & expensive so it's used only on large machines such as those made by cat & deere where large fuel savings are enough to justify large front investments.
3. Batteries become smaller but they're still expensive so luxury & sports cars adopt them as a status symbol
4. Batteries become cheap enough that all the new cars are using them
5. Oil producers collapse due to nobody buying their oil

Note

• Battery to wheel efficiency: ~68%
• Tank to wheel efficiency: About 16%

Which means electric motors are about 4x more efficient than combustion engines . Theoretical energy density of the Lithium Air battery is same as gasoline, even if its hard to achieve full potential even 25% of the potential density would put it on par as gasoline

See this as humorous take of Tesla Owner test driving gas car

posted about 8 years ago

Care_Bear‭

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