GM has just announced that the Chevy Volt battery will come with an 8-year / 100,000 mile warranty.

The announcement came today during a media briefing at a battery manufacturing facility in Michigan by GM Vice Chairman tom Stephens who went on to say that it has always been GM’s goal and intention to provide the Chevy Volt with a lithium-ion battery pack that would last for the entire life of the vehicle.

While GM refers to the Volt as an electric car, the California Air Resources Board looks at the range extending engine and considers the battery to be part of the its emission control system which means that it is mandated to have an eight-year warranty.

Other Chevy Volt battery pack details include the fact that 95% of its components were designed and built by GM, it weighs a hefty 400 lbs., and packs 110 kilowatts.

Toyota president Akio Toyoda recently let it slip that Toyota is currently creating an electric car that uses a Tesla battery pack. The interesting tidbit came out while he was answering inquiries regarding the Tesla and Toyota relationship.

While Toyota currently has a joint venture with Panasonic who is building their larger car batteries, Toyoda indicated that they are definitely interested in seeing what they can do with the Tesla 18650-format cells that are generally the type of battery found in laptops. By way of example, the Tesla Roadster battery pack uses 6,831 of these cells to power the electric sports car.

The likelihood of seeing Toyota cars using Tesla battery packs will all depend on how well they perform in these prototype tests which will look at the their ability to function past large scale accumulated mileage and extreme weather conditions.

If you’ve got a Christmas wish list that includes, “Electric vehicle with 500 mile range,” then you might be in luck. The Electric Drive Vehicle Deployment Act of 2010 is a bill that’s currently sitting in the House and Senate which could help grant you your Christmas wishes.

The bill has several important measures but the Senate version has a particularly interesting measure that would award a $10 million prize to the first company to create a commercially viable electric vehicle battery that could provide a range of 500 miles on a single charge.

While a 500 mile range sounds wonderful, it also sounds a little ridiculous. Maybe it would be better to encourage a lower cost battery with a range closer to 200 miles and focus on quick charging stations. Lots of gas powered cars can’t even make 500 miles on a single tank of gas. So heck, why stop at 500. Why don’t they offer $100 million for a 2,000 mile range battery that sings Carmina Burana to you while massaging your back and doing your laundry?