“From all manufacturers I think we’ll see electric vehicles dominate the whole transportation fleet (within the next 10 years)” – JB Straubel, Tesla’s CTO and co-founder

Steve Jurvetson, Tesla board member, and JB Straubel, Tesla’s CTO during a tour of the Gigafactory under-construction in Nevada – photo from Steve Jurvetson

Yesterday, Tesla’s CTO JB Straubel made interesting remarks about the future of transportation and energy storage during a keynote presentation at InterSolar, a major solar conference in San Francisco.

The engineer describes the current trend of battery cost as being on the edge of “a cliff”. He expects battery costs to decrease significantly in the same manner the cost of solar panels did during the last decade, which he thinks will ultimately lead to a future dominated by electric transport and renewable energy “within the next 10 years”.

According to Straubel, Tesla is already buying about 10% of the global lithium-ion battery production and the company will be contributing to the cost reduction mainly through their Gigafactory project.

You can watch the highlights of Straubel’s keynote presentation here: