Using electricity directly is fine for a lot of applications. Synthetic liquid fuels are a very inefficient, very dense "battery" that you can drop right in to

Using electricity directly is fine for a lot of applications. Synthetic liquid fuels are a very inefficient, very dense "battery" that you can drop right in to a trillion dollars' worth of existing fossil-powered machines. Hydrogen is (IMO) the worst of both worlds for most applications: much less efficient than battery electric systems, but can't be a drop-in fossil fuel replacement for existing airplanes/trucks/bulldozers either. Converting to hydrogen makes you pay for accelerated replacement of existing capital stock plus the inefficiency of storing energy as fuel.