The venerable and ridiculously cheap lead-acid battery that starts your car every time with stunning reliability should tell you something.

FORBES: A123 Bites the Dust Because They Forgot Their ABCs

The microgrid comprises eight 100-kW grid-tied inverters, the rooftop PV array, the lead-acid battery pack, backup diesel generators, and a Web-based monitoring and control system.

FORBES: Solar-Powered Microgrid Slashes Alcatraz Island's Dependence On Fossil Fuels

Power Technology is on the verge of producing what it claims is a revolutionary lightweight lead-acid battery but has yet to find any potential customers.

FORBES: Magazine Article

The lead-acid battery is one of the triumphs of 19th-century technology.

ECONOMIST: Einstein and car batteries

That much has been known since the lead-acid battery was invented.

ECONOMIST: Einstein and car batteries

The first reason was that the lead-acid battery packs used in the EV-1 weighed 1600 lb. and were both too heavy and not powerful enough for widespread use.

FORBES: General Motors Is Headed For Bankruptcy -- Again

Its original nickel-metal-hydride battery packs have been replaced with lead acid batteries to extend the distance the car can travel on electricity.

CNN: Hybrids trick out, plug in

Furukawa wants to reduce the price to of the salt-water system to half the cost of a conventional lead acid battery.

FORBES: Salt Water Fuel Cells - Coming Soon?

This week ARPA-E announced it is funding General Atomics to build a flow battery using well-known, and cheap, lead acid chemistry.

FORBES

On that crucial dimension, if lithium-ion batteries are a 3, the next best technology, NiMH is a 2, and a lead acid battery, like the one you use in your car, gets a 1.

FORBES: MIT Professor: Battery Fix Could Ground 787 Until 2014