John B. Goodenough, inventor of the Li-ion battery (LIB), distinguished professor at U of Texas, Austin and awarded the National Medal of Science by President Obama wrote*, "Chemists are contributing to incremental improvements of the conventional strategy by investigating and controlling electrode passivation layers, improving the rate of Li+ transfer across electrode/electrolyte interfaces, identifying electrolytes with larger windows while retaining a Li+ conductivity σLi >10-3 S cm-1 , ….", i.e. 103 ohm-cm of equivalent electrical resistance. The statement can be understood to mean that a typical 100 micron thick electrode coating has resistance of 10 ohms in each cm2 of electrode area. Resistance to ion movement required in any electrochemical cell is indistinguishable from resistance to electron flow between such chemistry and cell terminals. The latter extraordinarily high resistance is confirmed by many authors as more fully explained in the accompanying 'Technical Summary'. If a LIB electrode tried to put out 1/3rd of an amp/cm2 the voltage would drop to 0. That is why present commercial batteries deliver only about 1/100 th amp/cm2 and require so much electrode area in what amounts to primitive architecture. [Emphasis Added]
John B. Goodenough and Kyu-Sung Park, The Li-Ion Rechargeable Battery: A Perspective, J. Am. Chem. Soc., 2013, 135 (4), pp 1167-1176