Bottled Lightning: Superbatteries, Electric Cars, and the New Lithium Economy

Lithium batteries may hold the key to an environmentally sustainable, oil-independent future. From electric cars to a "smart" power grid that can actually store electricity, letting us harness the powers of the sun and the wind and use them when we need them, lithium—a metal half as dense as water, found primarily in some of the most uninhabitable places on earth—has the potential to set us on a path toward a low-carbon energy economy.