The energy density of liquid fuel is pretty hard to beat. There are many efforts to manufacture a carbon neutral gasoline substitute
https://electrek.co/2024/03/02/1-in-5-new-car-sales-globally... | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39575172
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2024-04-12/china-... | https://archive.today/8Dy4D
> BNEF is tracking 7.9 TWh of annual battery manufacturing capacity announced for the end of 2025. That’s compared to demand projections of 1.6 TWh, and even that assumes steady EV demand growth and very rapid growth in batteries for storage applications. Even half that total announced capacity would be enough to equip almost every car sold in the world next year with a 50 kWh battery pack.
The above assumes no additional battery manufacturing capacity is planned or comes online, which is unlikely as the world continues to electrify everything. It is very likely we continue to build more batteries faster and cheaper.
I admit that some use cases will liquid fuels for the foreseeable future (aviation, marine, with methanol or ammonia solving for this, produced using clean energy), but we are already accelerating towards pushing fossil fuels out of majority consumption use cases (electric grid, buildings, light vehicles).
> Pairing lithium and ambient oxygen can theoretically lead to electrochemical cells with the highest possible specific energy. Indeed, the theoretical specific energy of a non-aqueous Li–air battery, in the charged state with Li2O2 product and excluding the oxygen mass, is ~40.1 MJ/kg = 11.14 kWh/kg of lithium. This is comparable to the theoretical specific energy of gasoline, ~46.8 MJ/kg.
However, electric motors will also continue to improve, and are already the choice when a flat torque curve dominates the design space. Thus, the convergence of these trends (battery performance asymptotically approaching that of gasoline + improved motors and motor control) is the Series Electric Hybrid, with an ICE or fuel cell generator powering an electric power train, with a battery buffer to keep load on the generator constant. This will allow extreme optimization of the generator, so that it perpetually operates at peak efficiency.
Long distance air travel is pretty much the only scenario where this is relevant.
> About a decade ago, encouraged by government subsidies, hundreds of automakers across China, both established players and startups, waded into electric-car manufacturing. They churned out huge numbers of early-stage EVs — relatively no-frills cars whose batteries in some instances could only run for around 100 kilometers (62 miles) on a charge.
> Those vehicles were mostly bought by ride-hailing companies that leased them to drivers. “At the beginning of China’s EV market, delivery numbers were driven by car-sharing fleets,” said Young Huang, a senior analyst with JSC Automotive, a consultancy with offices in Shanghai and Stuttgart. “Only a few private customers chose to buy them.”
> The demand helped juice an industry that has grown exponentially ever since. China is now the world leader in clean cars, producing around 6 million EVs and plug-in hybrids last year, or almost one in every three new cars sold domestically. It accounts for 60% of the world’s current electric fleet, and has the most extensive EV charging infrastructure on Earth — also built with government support.
(emphasis above mine)
> The graveyards are a troubling consequence of that consolidation. Not only are the sites an eyesore, getting rid of EVs so quickly reduces their climate benefit considering they’re more emissions-intensive to build and only produce an advantage over combustion cars after a few years. Each of the vehicles’ spent batteries also contain precious ingredients like nickel, lithium and cobalt — metals that could be recycled to make China’s EV industry more environmentally friendly.
> According to local media reports, the government of Hangzhou has vowed to dispose of the cars, which started to accumulate in 2019. But when Bloomberg News visited late last month, reporters uncovered several sites filled with abandoned EVs in the city’s Yuhang and West Lake districts after scouring satellite images and hacking through overgrown dirt paths.
These historical relics from several years ago are not today's EVs China is pumping out, and that is fairly obvious from your citation. I hope this has helped improve your mental model on the topic.