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I know there have been great strides in ultracapacitors, and hydrogen fuel cells. Is there anyone out there that keeps track of these?
The state of the art battery systems are looking very good and are using variations of the lithium polymer design. As for alternate systems current Hydrogen fuel systems are massively inefficient, though not in the way that you would expect. It is mostly in the creation of the hydrogen used. Splitting water (H2O) is an extremely inefficient and other than that it is extremely explosive (much more so than gasoline) and corrosive. The Fuel cells themselves still have heat and durability issues though I am sure that they will be resolved in time. Ultra-capacitors have shown promise, but still need a lot of development as they have a much lower power density and higher cost. They would be good for lessening the current spike when an electric vehicle takes off, but not really viable as a full power source.
I am holding out for lithium derived batteries to eventually come down in price and become common place in electric vehicles at least for mobile applications. If you are referring to large scale power storage, there are a lot more new technologies that are maturing like thermal, or water energy storing systems.
I've been keenly following ultracapacitors. Ultracapacitors need some advances before they will approach the power density of batteries but ultracapacitors have a number of good qualities that could make them useful in a hybrid battery-ultracapacitor system. Ultracapacitors have extremely fast charge and discharge ability. In an automotive context they could store the large surge of electricity produced by regenerative braking then charge the batter at the rate it can accept. Likewise the battery could recharge the capacitor then it would be available for the kind of surge of power needed to merge onto an expressway, pass another vehicle, or crest a steep hill. A ultracapacitor in parallel with rechargeable batteries exploiting the strengths of each could be better than either alone. Ultracapacitors also can survive nearly infinite numbers of charge-discharge cycles.
