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Over the past decades, the drastic increases in the gasoline price and green-house gas emission have driven us to address the environmental and resource challenges of internal combustion engine vehicles. Electrification in the transportation sector is an emerging trend and battery technology plays the critical role in this revolutionary transformation. As compared with other battery chemistries (e.g., Lead-acid and Ni/MH batteries), the adoption of lithium ion batteries is expected to grow fast due to their potential of higher specific energy and energy density. The EV application requires the batteries have high energy, high power, robust, long life, and low cost towards specific USABC targets. Unfortunately, the conventional electrode materials, especially anode materials, cannot fulfill the need for electric vehicle usage. Therefore, the development of novel advanced anode materials, such as silicon or silicon-based materials, is essential to achieve the requirement of Li-ion batteries for EV and PHEV application. Although there is already major progress made in the development of Si-based anode materials during past few years, the available Si materials still fall short in fulfilling the requirements of high energy systems for vehicular application. Here we demonstrate some full cell comparisons of the battery performances of different cathode systems paired with Si-based materials using published literature data. Corresponding analysis and comparison using important electrode level parameters are provided. The requirements of Si-based materials for any applied vehicle level usage are also summarized and demonstrated.