I have to say I'm a little confused, isn't magnesium a rather abundant metal in fact I remember it was touted as one of many possible materials that could be extracted from seawater to make desalination more economical. These economic bans on different materials are going to impoverish the whole world - there are some countries you can sanction without much blowback but I don't think China is one of those countries.

Personally I want to be either driving or sleeping in the back - the I don't touch anything but need to be alert is kind of the worst of all worlds to me.

Do I believe a CVT transmission could improve efficiency and some other aspects of an EV, Yes but it also increases cost, weight, and introduces another point of failure in the drivetrain -many things sound great if you just talk about the pros and forget the cons.

Since some of you were talking about metal air batteries I have a question - a few years ago I saw some information about a magnesium air / fuel cell someone was working on - it's format was like double side magnesium foil with a very tough plastic inside rolled up like a large paper towels roll then it would go through two electrodes and the spent part was wound up on another spindle- supposedly the whole set-up was less than a hundred pounds and the roll could provide 150KWhs in 30 hours time, I've been looking but now can't find anything like it, anyone seen anything like that? it was Korean with English subtitles if that helps.

E.P., yep wireless charging in the main interstates would solve most EV problems but it sounds so much like socialism I doubt it is ever done here. I thought maybe you'd see it in China but now that China and the U.S. seem determined to have a dick measuring contest they will probably start spending more on their military instead of advanced infrastructure. Sigh .... the world is run by adolescent minded sociopaths we must just continue to do the best we can.

Davemart says "150-160Wh/kg according to the chart. Not much good for car batteries, for instance, I would have thought." Energy density at the cell level is important but it's not the only thing - for example if my cell chemistry is fire safe and not very temperature sensitive my battery pack can lose weight and size from not needing a heating and cooling system or fire protection, if my battery chemistry is very robust then maybe instead of keeping my charging and discharging between 20%-80% you can do 5%-95%, if my battery chemistry can charge and discharge at a high rate then my brake regen could be maybe 70% instead of 30% , faster charging counts ! a vehicle with a 200 mile range that can be recharge in 5 min might be just as useful as a vehicle with a 350 mile range that needs 60 mins to recharge.

I've felt that this is the way to go for vans and buses for a long time, add in wireless charging and you can have a mini power grid system . Mitigating Climate Change reminds me about the question "How do you eat an elephant?" "one bite at a time"

Hydrogen can be produced cheaply from urea -insert joke here

But you don't have to burn the carbon feedstock for it to turn to in to CO2 or methane - microbes and other natural processes will do that anyways so until we eliminate ICE engines it's better to use carbon that is already in the carbon cycle than to bring up more sequestered carbon.

I think the point is it does double duty as both battery and structural member so it adds electrical storage with zero weight cost - but how practical would it be? I don't know, I would think wiring up these spread out batteries would be a pain, I did have an idea where each door would work of it's own battery , charged by solar cells but that has problems too.

If you are able to store more Hydrogen in a less awkward shaped tank it is another step in my dream of fuel cells being a range extender while keeping all the motor parts in the skate board . Wheel motors or at least corner motors , 20-30Kw of fuel cells, + 5 Kg of Hydrogen + 50Kwh of batteries.

In the competition between batteries and fuel-cells I have always thought that fuel-cells and hydrogen had a lot of hurdles to overcome but there have been a lot of advances the last couple years . I still think the future might be BEV with a fuel-cell range extender.

While there hasn't been that one huge breakthrough for EVs there has been a swarm of incremental improvements (motors, power electronics, HVAC, Batteries, Battery pack design, etc) that bode well for EVs overtaking ICEs this decade.

I'm not against this but I'd have to see the whole thing play out - yes the motor can be smaller but the transmission has weight, takes up space, has costs, and has it's own efficiency losses but maybe it's pluses are better than the minuses - my number one concern is how robust is this CVT, one of the great things about EVs is their general mechanical simplicity less need of maintenance and repair.

The increased energy density would be great but the faster charging might be even more important.

In theory I like enough batteries to get you about 120 miles and enough reformed methanol fuel-cells to let you drive around 70-75 mph for as long as you have methanol fuel . It is a little more complicated than a battery only EV and probably the technology will need more refinement but I think 20 KWs of fuel-cell and 40 KWHs of batteries might be better than either 120 KWHs of batteries or 100KWs of fuel cells with a 2KWH battery .

@Lad I agree with you in fact I'd say the oil companies have been getting 100s of Billions not Millions in subsides (I consider that about a third of our military budget is directly for the purpose of controlling the flow of oil) but we have to take politics into consideration as well as science, don't think it's impossible for California to get a republican governor who is less concerned with climate change, I think there are many more subtle things and overall more effective things you can do to help move the needle to electric - for example you could give gas stations an incentive to put in a charging station or two, a 1% interest rate 96 month electric car loan, instead of tax based incentives I'd like a a climate change prevention card with about $10,000 on it that could be used towards anything from LED lighting to solar cells to electric cars to geothermal exchange heating and cooling or anything in that vein .

I don't think it's a good move, either electric cars will replace ICE cars because they are better or they they won't, I think they will but you got to let it play out, so many on the other side hate mandates they will drive the poorer option just out of spite - I'd just increase the gas tax a few pennies, maybe let electric cars go two years between inspections and buy a few electric school buses.