[harpastum]

The energy density of gas makes it incredibly useful for storage and transportation as well. For example, Tesla's 50MWh battery installation in Australia has the same energy as only 1,500 gallons of gasoline. (It's not an apples to apples comparison, I just wanted to give an example of a "large" battery installation.)

Obviously there are lots of benefits of batteries over gas, but being able to load up a standard 10,000 gallon tanker truck with 300MWh of energy and drive it anywhere there's a road is something batteries simply can't do.

[Grustaf]

Sure, but how useful is the energy density in practice? 1. Very soon all new cars will be electric anyway (because that is better for other reasons) 2. I’m assuming range will not be an issue, almost all private driving is very local, so most cars don’t benefit from long range, as long as it’s easy to get long range vehicles when you need them. And of course trucks etc will need to be long range. 3. Driving a truckload of energy is cool but how useful is it? We can already deliver more energy than that instantly through the grid, and most populated places on earth are on the grid now so it seems like a niche use case.

[owenversteeg]

Yup, exactly. You can fit the entire battery installation in 5.5 cubic meters! A fairly small closet, even (1.4x1.5x2.5 meters for example, 4.5 x 5 x 8 feet) could fit the entire battery plant, which is huge by comparison.