The book "Powering the Future" also argues fuel will always outperform batteries, pointing out that both fuel and batteries store chemical energy, and that chem

The book "Powering the Future" also argues fuel will always outperform batteries, pointing out that both fuel and batteries store chemical energy, and that chemical energy density is fundamentally contrained by physics: Since all atoms are approximately the same size there is a limit to how many bonds/volume you can have, and since all chemical bonds are roughly the same amount of energy there's a limit on how much energy/volume you can store with chemical energy. The book then argues that hydrocarbon fuels come very close to the ideal energy density, and have many other advantages over batteries (weight (they're formed with light elements), extremely safe byproducts CO2 H2O, simple ingredients).