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The battery story is interesting. There's been phenomenal improvement. Much has been in price, though power density and recharge cycles have also improved. Ultimately, though, battery performance is bounded by chemistry. There's only so much electrical potential per unit mass and volume. It's good enough for automobiles, and lighter bikes. I'm highly dubious of trucks, though battery-assist plus some sort of catenary / third-rail feed might work. Shipping, high-capacity long-range air, and rail are likely out though. My view is that the biggest shifts will be in land-use, and transportation and commerce patterns, as distance and transport become more expensive. Entry-level cars were hitting the $5k price point or less (e.g., Tata, Chinese models). Tesla is clocking in at about 10x that. Scooters, bicycles, electrfied bikes, public transit, increased walkability, seem more likely. |
How is that you came to this conclusion? The larger and heavier your vehicle, the less energy/mass you need to make it move, so relatively batteries become smaller. If they work for cars, they will work for trucks with slack.
(And the correct conclusion is that no, they don't completely work for cars today. They only work in urban environments. But they shouldn't see any physical limit until they are only about 2 times as heavy as diesel (maybe they can improve further, I wouldn't know), and that limit is quite practical already.)
Boats, by their turn, have no restriction at all on batteries power density. They could use today's batteries without a problem. They are all about costs, and physics do not limit those a lot.
> and rail
And well, that one doesn't even need large batteries.