I understand from reading here that most of this seems to have become geared towards a debate between hobbiest regulars, on the forums or otherwise. I've been reading all over the place in the last few weeks and have randomly decided to throw a bunch of money into not only repairing my bicycle, but, electrifying it at the same time. I'm absolutely what you'd throw under "n00b".
For some people you're going to be looking at cost comparison and penny pinching. When you're talking about a couple of hundred for hundreds, if not thousands, of cycles, I don't think you'd have any good reason to pick the lower cycle power source unless you really just don't have the money. Myself, I'm looking at it where I'm going to get a ROI on fun , and not driving my huge 8 cylinder car.
I'm not sure what the audience is that you're going for here. If you've got $2k to drop on an e-Bike, then you're going to choose the best parts for the application, and penny pinching isn't going to help. Either you're out of power, or, supposedly, you're on fire.
Looking at liveforphysics' video on youtube, these cells *shouldn't* burn your house down unless you overcharge them, yet, I see reports of people saying that the batteries just burst into flames with no provocation. That's rare, admittedly, but, if it burns down my apartment even occasionally, that's far too often.
I've been looking at things like the 48v20ah Ping battery, thinking I'll get along just fine at 30A peak, and I probably will. But, what if I want that power in reserve? What if I don't want to strap 15+ lbs of battery brick to my bike somewhere? I have a stupid Haro frame that has almost no workable 'triangle' area, so I'm out of luck.
I'm battery shopping and these graphs and such don't really help as much as all the difference in time and effort does. LiFePO4 is being cast as a "set it and forget it" sort of implement, and LiPo (Cobalt, primarily, from what I'm reading) is the performance and tweaker's cell. If I'm commuting to work, 15 miles each way, I don't want to plug something in, in my office, that might just perhaps burst into flames and burn it down, if I don't stare at it and have a fire extinguisher under my desk. That's how LiPo comes off to me. So the time and preparation elements are well worth throwing a few hundred at Ping instead of trying to plan my daily commute around some undefined time of staring at a pile of chargers and battery packs to make sure I 'm not dead or lose my job.
I really think you want to talk about more in your cost/benefit other than cell value and life. As already mentioned elsewhere, information is so scattered, and, for whatever reason, images just don't show up half the time, so for someone new to the hobby it just does not make sense to throw even a minimum investment into LiPo to see if it will work out, without someone outlining that "this is what you will have to do for daily usage assuming you'll have to charge somewhere on the road along the way (work etc) or just flat out saying, it's not for you. I've been in a number of weird hobbies and when I'm seeing that you're buying battery packs for R/C cars in quantities being described in terms like 'piles' or 'mountains' , bulk charging with random eBay chargers, regularly ordering nebulously described parts from China, I can tell you that the average layperson isn't going to do it, and the information here just isn't coherant enough to attract what I would consider to be middle-of-the-road persons who don't have a career in this field.
My 2c, and, note, I'm definately getting into this. Be it a ping and a run-of-the-mill travel bike, or something that, to paraphrase Methods, can zip through an intersection when you need it to, I'm going to end up paying my way through the learning experience, but, I can just tell you from trying to read and get the information I need, without just flat-out asking every question, it just isn't a clear picture.