[etherael]

Energy density. I'm not sure exactly what it is for lifepo4 but it's lower than 1,406.6 kWh/m^3 for hydrogen at 700 bar, i think roughly half.

Both compare poorly against diesel though so I'm left wondering if synthetic fossil fuels produced from renewable inputs might not actually be the way to go. In the beginning it seemed like efficiency was going to be important and a limiting factor to all this, and batteries definitely have an edge on fuels produced from renewable sources. But now it's seeming like actually producing large amounts of energy isn't as much of a problem as ensuring that it is available at the point of consumption economically and logistically. Synthetic fossil fuels that pull carbon from the atmosphere would be carbon neutral and fit neatly into the existing system with no other modifications.

It stands to reason there's a threshold at which the cost of production is so much lower than the cost of transmission and storage that it makes sense to take efficiency losses for storage and transmission gains.