Yesterday, I provided to you the evidence that oil may never again reach a triple digit price.

Today I am going to tell you what will replace it.

Sony Corp. (SNE) invented the lithium ion battery in 1991 to power its high end consumer electronics products. It is now looking like that was a discovery on par with Bell Labs’ invention of the transistor in 1947 and Intel’s creation of the microprocessor in 1971, although no one knew it at the time.

Until then, battery technology was essentially unchanged since the first one was invented by Alessandro Volta in 1800 and Gaston Plante upgraded it to the lead acid version in 1859. That is the same battery that today starts your conventional gasoline powered car every morning.

The Sony breakthrough proved the springboard for a revolution in battery power. It has fed into cheaper and ever more powerful iPhones, electric cars, and even large scale utilities.

In 1995, the equivalent of today’s iPhone 6 battery cost $20. Today it can be had for $1.40 if you buy in bulk, which Apple does by the shipload. That’s a cost reduction of a mind blowing 93%.

Electric car batteries have seen prices plunge from $1,000/kilowatt in 2009 to only $200 today.

Tesla Motors  (TSLA) expects that price to drop to $150 when its $6 billion new “gigafactory” comes online in Sparks, Nevada next year. The facility will produce cookie cutter off the shelf batteries made under contract by Japan’s Panasonic (Matsushita).

That will pave the way for the Tesla 3 in 2018, a low end $35,000 vehicle with a 200-mile range that will take over the global car market.

If you took existing battery technologies and applied them as widely as possible, it would have the effect of reducing American oil consumption from 22 to 18 million barrels a day. That’s what the oil market seems to be telling us, with prices at a 13-year low at $26 a barrel.

Improve battery capabilities just a little bit more and that oil consumption drops by half very quickly.