You are confusing the selling price with cost.
I would like to think batteries from Valence Technologies are "gaining traction", but I read a lot about battery technology for electric/hybrid vehicles, and Valence is rarely mentioned. Valence cells are already made in China, I believe, not the USA. Curiously, there doesn't seem to be a reference to Segway on the Valence website. If it IS there, it's buried pretty good!
To put it in perspective, $5 million would pay for batteries for about 4,000 Segs, by my estimate. If this were a monthly order, it might be notable. If it is an annual order, it does not significantly change the manufacturing economy of scale for manufacture of Lithium Ion batteries.
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