Anyway, batteries are not an energy source, just storage. Somebody has to build generating capacity.
Not explained in the article is there is a threshold effect in play here. Electric cars are probably cheaper on a per mile basis now, but not on a capital basis. However batteries are coming down in price so fast that within a decade we may find that electric cars are cheaper on a capital basis. If that happens, gasoline cars will stop being produced overnight.
Other one that people don't consider as much is that outside the united states and a few other oil producing countries oil imports are considered to be a necessary evil. If the governments of those places think that they can run their transportation infrastructure without oil, they'll switch as fast as possible and erect very stiff taxes to reduce demand for oil imports. AKA do the rulers of China like that they need to import oil? No they absolutely hate that. Which is to say inside the US oil companies have a lot of economic and political power, outside the US governments hate and fear them.
Both of these means that demand for oil could start falling rapidly. That will depress the price, any producer that can't economically produce at the new price will be bankrupt. Any oil exploration business will go bankrupts.
Some people will still pay for range or range at speed or less charging time.
http://jalopnik.com/they-drove-a-tesla-from-la-to-new-york-i... is a decent look at the state of technology. Driving across the US takes at least 12.5 hours of charging time, and averaged 65.4mph while ICE record averaged 98mph.
Even when "electric cars are cheaper on a capital basis", the technology will still be well behind ICE in some ways (and well ahead in others).
% Type mpg gal/yr ext
50% Electric -- 0 0
25% Plug in Hybrid 80 150 X 0.25 = 37.5
25% Non-Hybrid 30 400 X 0.25 = 100
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Total 137.5
100% Non-Hybrid 30 400 X 1.00 = 400
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100% 400
And that's in the US. In countries without domestic oil production the choice will be made for you.
IIUC, you can generate far more solar electricity during the day than can be consumed. But that electricity isn't available at night because storing it in batteries is too expensive right now. With cheaper batteries there are stronger incentives to build more renewable generating capacity, driving down costs further etc etc.
Back in the 1960s and 1970s when the power industry thought we were going to go nuclear, they built a lot of pumped water storage systems. There's one in Western MA built under a mountain that pumps water from a river to an artificial lake at the top of the mountain. The plan was to pump water at night using extra power generated by nuclear plants, and then run generators during the day to make up the shortcoming.
My guess is that the facility now pumps water during the day to act as storage for solar power.
The efficiency is about 70 or 80%, from what I remember. Batteries are a much higher efficiency, and can be placed much closer to the load.
Thus, mass-produced low-cost batteries will really disrupt the grid, because older forms of storage, like pumped water, will be obsolete. Furthermore, because batteries can be placed much closer to load, the needs for grid capacity change because high transmission lines no longer need to handle peak load.
Someone could take the old Superconducting Supercollider tunnel in Texas, put in the theoretical PowerLoop infrastructure for about $500m and then it would be able to store enough power for the entire state of Texas to operate for over a day. The money it would make on the arbitrage between cheap power generated from solar & wind and times where demand exceeded baseline generation capacities would pay for the system, according to the designer, within a few weeks.