Ex-Navy engineer built a car battery with a 1,500 mile range | Metro News Read this article and it sounds like this guy knows what he is doing. Interesting on the kickback he has gotten.
"Technically, it should be described as a fuel cell, not a battery." This sounds like a primary (i.e. non-rechargeable) metal-air cell, so it cannot be directly compared to a rechargeable-in-place battery. The metal "fuel" is oxidized during use, then must be swapped out and replaced with fresh material. The old stuff, in this case the entire unit, is sent back for recycling / "recharging" / chemical reduction. The refining process consumes a lot of electric energy, enough so that some folks have described aluminum as 'electricity in its solid form'. I'm also guessing that the range estimate is for an optimistic hypermiler, not conforming to EPA or possibly even Euro mileage rating rules.
Phinergy has been working on Al-air batteries for EV, but they use it as a range extender to a rechargable battery. IIRC, their test BEV had about 80 miles of grid range and a thousand from the Al-air. Phinergy - Wikipedia
