There seems to be few if any battery experts who see an alternative for Li variant batteries in the next ?? years (where ?? may be 10?).
The Li anode batteries (see also http://www.solidenergysystems.com/) sound great (100% increase in energy density, for example), but have been stuck in development for a long time now. Quantumscape seems to offer no clues as to it's progress whilst SolidEnergy is reliably failing to meet indicated progress dates - see http://www.nature.com/nature/outlook/batteries/pdf/batteries.pdf for a reasonable overview document. In that document you will notice that they had indicated batteries will be available for drones in 2015, watches in 2016 and smart phones in 2017. They haven't met even the first yet.
'Solid' Li batteries have great promise and particularly with regard to high temperature operation. There is one PV panel manufacturer I came across who advertises they include battery as well as microinverter in the panel. But I'm sure they have given up holding their breath, just as I have.
It seems Li-Ion variants will be with us for a long time yet. The only other battery technology feasible for stationary storage applications is reflow, but that will never be suitable for vehicles. No doubt, from an electro-chemistry point of view, there are better technologies. But the relentless forces of the commercial market place seems to favour the success of first to market second rate technologies (eg Microsoft). Li-Ion will dominate the market and small incremental improvements will see it strangle all competing emerging technologies. Given recent pricing announcements for Powerwall 2 it is hard to see even reflow being able to compete (as much as I'd like to see Redflow succeed).
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