Diesel, kerosene, rocket propelled RP1, and fuel oil / bunker fuel in the case of cargo ships.

It’s not a coincidence that where easy of handling, storage safety, and high energy density are needed everything seems to converge on compression ignition medium to long chain liquid hydrocarbons.

There are some innovation like hydrogen paste but it’s not going to be useful for a combustion engine cycle.

We store hydrogen all the time for industrial processes. It's not some super science, it's just expensive.

The bZ4X? 10+ years after the Nissan Leaf?

Toyota sells bad EVs and was the last OEM to offer one. It’s the most anti-EV OEM by far and engages/engaged in the most EV FUD.

> Boeing's next major plane won't run on batteries, but the one afterwards definitely will.

Jet engines work better. Boeing's next major plane will have jet engines, just like their previous major planes.

Synthetic, carbon neutral jet fuel will be the future for commercial jets.

> So now we're only 3x-4x of a direct replacement.

The math leads out an important factor. As the liquid fuel burns, the airplane gets lighter. A lot lighter. Less weight => more range. More like 6x-8x.

Batteries don't get lighter when they discharge.

Well, there's also burning regular fuel in a fuel cell, a FCEV. That doubles the efficiencies over ICE, so I guess that bumps it back up to 8x away?

Given the great energy densities and stability in transport of hydrocarbons, there's already some plants out there synthesising them directly from green sources, so that could be a solution if we don't manage to increase battery densities by another order of magnitude.

More accurately, the calculation needs to factor in the fact that battery weight doesn’t decrease as charge is used.

Commercial aviation’s profitability hinges on being able to carry only as much fuel as strictly[1] required.

How can batteries compete with that constraint?

Also, commercial aviation aircraft aren’t time-restricted by refuelling requirements. How are batteries going to compete with that? Realistically, a busy airport would need something like a closely located gigawatt scale power plant with multi-gigawatt peaking capacity to recharge multiple 737 / A320 type aircraft simultaneously.

I don’t believe energy density parity with jet fuel is sufficient. My back of the neocortex estimate is that battery energy density would need to 10x jet fuel to be of much practical use in the case of narrow-body-and-up airliner usefulness.

One of the trade offs is that engines are actually ridiculously heavy. Compact, extreme high power electric motors are starting to be commercialised. But also, fuel burns so you lose weight as you’re flying whereas batteries stay the same.

Electric aviation is interesting but as someone who knows a bit about the industry, biofuels make more sense here.

Structural batteries were supposed to be the solution where the density wasn't so important. I don't really have a good understanding of the ration of fuel weight to structural weight in existing aircraft though.

Jet engine and wing efficiency have increased enormously over the last 50 years.

Hydrogen only makes electric vehicles look good and the only alternative. In fact, if this purposeful which I doubt, it probably helped stopped other companies from making hydrogen