I don't disagree (at least w.r.t electric cars), but to play devil's advocate: a factor of 50-100 is A LOT. We're talking about two orders of magnitude here, which would require a fundamental breakthrough in battery technology to achieve parity with gasoline. Even if we make batteries twice as efficient, we're still 25-50 worse than gasoline. And breakthroughs in battery technology are hard to come by. So if Toyota wants to hitch their wagon to fuel-cell technology instead, all the power to them! Batteries are not necessarily the future of portable energy.