Comment by samplatt
1 day ago
There's hope that sodium-ion tech will come to the rescue, here. The energy-density is bordering on 'good enough' but it's not quite there, yet.
There's other technologies that they're trialing for boats that seem silly but works on paper at least. We're currently building a ferry with a massive flywheel to store lots of rotational inertia to convert to electricity, which on the face of it is bonkers but again, the maths says it's good.
I am counting my chickens before they hatch, but sulfur chemistries should help quite a lot. Same abundance of materials, 2x to 3x the energy density.
It's my impression that a lot of sulfur and other "advanced" chemistries are held up by operating restrictions like temperature for consumer vehicles, but industrial transport vehicles might not have such requirements because they have constant output.