Instead of responding with anger and vitriol how about we talk rationally? I'm interested in electric cars and would love to own one once they make economic and practical sense. However given the comments it seems that the warranty on the transmission is far more conservative than that on the battery pack so the ratio is still about 2-3 times longer life for the transmission only it is ~8 years vs. 20.
On top of this the study you linked to made no mention of aging effects without regard to use: battery capacity declines with age and that decline is non-linear with time. If the current technology is post 2008 then I doubt they will have a good understanding of the aging yet and will be using projections which can be inaccurate.
However I admit that I am surprised by the far longer lifetime for batteries that they are claiming which is great. Sadly though
this page tells me that they still have a way to go yet. If leaving the battery at -30C or below for a day will invalidate the warranty then the car is still useless for those of us who live in Canada.
Lastly though even at 8 years (with degraded capacity) the "fuel" cost is still significant. At 100k miles for a $20k pack (using the figures from the OP) and assuming $0.10/kWh and that 85kWh=265miles that works out at $0.232/mile. If I assume 30mpg for a petrol powered car that works out at a cost of $6.96 per gallon-equivalent or $1.83/litre which is 2.5 times the current cost of petrol in the US (according to Google)...and that's before we factor in the longer life of the transmission.
So my numbers may have been off but the conclusion is still the same. At the current cost of petrol in the US (
$0.70/litre in March 2015) you save ~5.66 cents/mile on fuel so the price per kWh of a battery needs to drop to $66/kWh to match the cost of petrol over a 100k mile lifetime.