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Maybe not never ever, but not within our lifetimes. Not without some massive unforeseen breakthrough in battery technology or life extension. Electrifying a large long-haul commercial passenger aircraft like a 737 would require batteries with a specific energy at least two orders of magnitude better than current state of the art. For reference, actual batteries have improved less than one order of magnitude in the past century.

Really the closest thing that seems plausible would be a hybrid design using small batteries to provide peak power for takeoff and fuel cells to provide the bulk of the energy. But I'm not confident that would actually be significantly better than manufacturing synthetic fuels with renewable energy and burning them in traditional jet engines.



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