All of the electric airplane work I've seen is either highly experimental (e.g., solar-powered aircraft), effectively powered gliders, or some very small and not-particularly-capable 1-2 person craft.
I mean, it's cool that humans won't have to give up the skies entirely, but we've also got perfectly viable aircraft with no engines whatsoever, for which a ground-tow launch is a present reality.
If you're looking at a credible commercial passenger or freight aviation model, this ain't it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_aircraft
Fuel synthesis is something I've discussed elsewhere in this thread. I actually think the US Naval Research Lab's concept of using seawater as both an H2 and CO2 source is inspired -- there's about 140x the CO2 by volume than in air.