Just take  a visit to Zenn Electric cars - they have or shortly will receive 15kWhr EEStor
devices to install in their electrics and test.
They own a piece of EEStor. I would hazzard a guess that an electric car company can evaluate a battery without the need for a panel of Nobel prize winners.

Thanks;  I was just trying to relate it to a standard like we use when comparing gas milage.  I am used to so many miles per gallon so I was trying to equate energy usage to so many miles per KWhr.  5 Miles per KWHr equals 200 w-hr/mile.  Here in Minnesota we pay $.09/WKhr with tax for electricity. That makes any of the EV's cheap to run. 

I have to agree. A123's pack may have more energy density, however, A123's pack has only been tested around 1000-2000 charge/recharge cycles according to their A123's web site.

"Even when cycled at 10C discharge rates, our cells deliver in excess of 1,000 full depth-of-discharge cycles."

Somehow A123 takes that performance and "projects" a life of 10 years? Maybe, maybe not. My guess is thats why there will be testing until June 2008. Projecting, and seeing the actual results are two different things.

Altairnano's pack has been tested to 25,000 cycles.

On top of that, I haven't seen any claims from A123 for quick charging as Altair claims of less than 10 minutes to charge with no degradation to charge capacity.

As for third party, Altairnano's battery is being tested by AeroEnvironment. So far the claims of Altairnano have been true, though it is still early in the testing. To read more about this independent third party testing:

http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/070530/20070530005396.html?.v=1

Holy cow! How many recharge cycles do we need?

With "only" 10,000 cycles I can recharge my vehicle every day for over 27 years. There's not much chance the rest of the car (or maybe even myself) will last that long.

If the claimed recharging time of ten minutes is accurate, it would seem the most important development priorities should now be range (a.k.a. energy density) and cost.

Actually, you are quite wrong. GM used inferior batteries even though better ones were available at the time. GM bought controlling share of a battery company that had superior battery technology only to not use them, sell their share to Texeco in an effort to shut them down... in other words, GM set up their EV-1 to fail from the get go. It DID sell quite well but that didn't matter to them. They had more standing orders than units actually built (this from inside GM sources who have publicly come out regarding all of this.)

As for the Tesla, you are VERY wrong. The motor and battery technology had nothing to do with GM, it was developed by and licensed from AC Propulsion: http://www.acpropulsion.com/tzero/

They actually went head to head with an EV-1 to show how superiour their technology is (the same tecnology now in the Tesla Motors vehicle.)

http://www.acpropulsion.com/releases/01-03-1997.htm

"I'm not a fan of GM by any means, but the EV-1 did not sell well, it did not work well, it wasn't ready to go mainstream."

It didn't sell well because of the horrible commercials GM made for it.  They have two of them on YouTube, go take a look.  How didn't it work well?  All you had to take your EV-1 to the mechanic for was the tires and, after a long time, the brakes.  Mainstream meaning to the other 48 states they didn't advertise in?  I think it was ready.  The "2nd generation" EV-1's, as they call them, used better batteries and had longer range.  30 miles is enough for a large portion of the U.S. population, and the EV-1 could go almost three times that.  I like Ed Begley Jr.'s joke in the movie: "It could only meet the needs... of 90% of the population."

"The car was a huge money loser for GM"

Because they spent a billion dollars in R&D but stopped selling it.  Also, they didn't take a check for $2 million from a former GM employee - Chelsea Sexton - for the return of the remaining EV-1's to their owners.  GM instead spent more money and crushed them.

"the battery started at too short a range and quickly degraded to way too short a range."

I already explained that the battery was good enough.

"The battery in the EV-1 cost too much, had a lot of performance problems and wouldn't last."

GM didn't sell the car, they leased it, so we don't really know how much the battery would've made the car cost.  Big mistake, in my opinion.  But that makes me think they planned it.  If they sold it, they couldn't ask for the car back.  And if they couldn't ask for them back, they couldn't have crushed them.

"GM made a good business decision, that made sense."

Though it kind of sucks that they had to be forced by the California Air Resources Board to make that decision.  Making useless commercials for the EV-1 was a bad business decision.

"If you want to help the environment, then you shouldn't hold Hollywood-designed grudges."

I didn't understand what you said here, sorry.

"The Tesla you're hoping for is using technology developed at GM for both the motor and the battery management system. They upgraded both to new systems, but GM did the groundwork."

Is that really a problem?  Tesla's picking up the slack.  GM could be doing this.  They could've upgraded their own technology and re-released the EV-1.