Eberhard has good news for those eager to see the widespread adoption of EV technology: Range anxiety, widely agreed to be a major hurdle for most everyday consumers, may be virtually nonexistent in just 10 years. Eberhard says that at the current rate of progress, an EV's range could be up to 500 miles on a single charge within 10 years.

VW is working exclusively with 18650 lithium-ion batteries -- you may know them as the same ones in laptop computers. The reason for working with this existing battery technology is twofold: First, they are in such high demand that a proportionately larger amount of research and development goes into improving them; and second, cars can benefit from state-of-the-art technology right away, as opposed to having to create, build test, and, ultimately, make work their own devices.

Thanks to those factors, the tech is evolving quickly. From Wired's "Autopia" blog:
“The batteries we used in the original Audi e-tron prototype, for example, gave it 60 kilowatt-hours of power and a range of just over 150 miles,” he says. “But with the 3.4 amp-hour cells we’re about to take delivery of, it should have 100 kwh and do close to 300 miles on a charge.”

Aside from the rapidly advancing capabilities of EV batteries, the drastically increased range reduces the need for a massive infrastructure overhaul.