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Oh, it can be done. There are no scientific laws that say you can't run a car on water. In fact, a Japanese company is the latest to claim they have pulled it off. See the video here: Water-fuel car unveiled in Japan However, what you can't do is run a car on water without energy inputs greater than you get from splitting the water.

The future market for hybrid-electric vehicles, at least those that are affordable, isn't necessarily paved with lithium. Researchers in Australia have created what could be called a lead-acid battery on steroids, capable of performing as well as the nickel-metal hydride systems found in most hybrid cars but at a fraction of the cost. The so-called UltraBattery combines 150-year-old lead-acid technology with supercapacitors, electronic devices that can quickly absorb and release large bursts of energy over millions of cycles without significant degradation. As a result, the new battery lasts at least four times longer than conventional lead-acid batteries, and its creators say that it can be manufactured at one-quarter the cost of existing hybrid-electric battery packs.

Sunset technologies tend to be resilient against reports on their demise. But eventually, they have to go - cf carburators, word processors, ... But some of us have a chance to retire before the lead-acid battery does.

Toyota, the leader in hybrid cars, thinks that the high cost of the lithium ion batteries will keep electric cars from penetrating the mass market for another decade. Over the past three years, Toyota secretly tested lithium ion batteries as a potential replacement for the nickel metal hydride batteries now used in the Prius, according to a Bloomberg report In its tests, Toyota concluded that lithium-ion batteries were safe and reliable, but the higher cost doesn't justify a complete shift over for Toyota's hybrids, executives said. As a result, the company will remain with nickel-based batteries for most of its hybrid cars, according to the report.