I was so confused, I thought vercel had an outage.
This makes more sense now.
I got 3 different calls from some people today about Vercel and switching off of it, couldn't figure out why - they were spending upwards of 5k-10k/mo.
Don't have time to reply to everyone. Clearly triggered a lot of programmers here, so I'll try to go point by point.
Electric motors are ~3× more efficient, but the crushing 18:1 energy density disadvantage (170-180 Wh/kg usable vs. 3,200 Wh/kg for jet fuel) creates a physics trap no engineer can escape [1].
A staggering 70.3% of total energy is consumed before the damn thing even moves – manufacturing (35.2%), extraction (19.8%), and processing (15.3%) create an energy debt that makes the whole proposition a joke[2]
Grids: Carbon intensity varies wildly (200-840g CO₂e/kWh), meaning your "clean" electric plane is often dirtier than conventional systems – that's not an opinion, it's EPA data [3].
Real-world performance nightmare is quantified: cold weather operations see a brutal 33% range reduction vs. just 6% for conventional, charging wastes 22.4% operational efficiency, and VTOL applications – which fanboys love to cite – require 2.5-3× more energy per mile than normal flight [4].
We've seen improvements (2.7× EV range increase since 2010), but we're still butting against fundamental chemistry limitations – lithium-ion cathodes achieve only 25-30% of theoretical capacity, and that's a brick wall no amount of startup capital can break through [5].
Synthetic fuels? Give me a break – 10-15% round-trip efficiency means you need 6.7-10× more renewable capacity than direct electrification, basically requiring us to cover half the planet in solar panels [6].
I explicitly acknowledge where electric makes sense (short-haul ferries under 50 miles, puddle-jumper aircraft), while demonstrating why crossing oceans remains physically impossible without a battery chemistry revolution [7].
lithium propulsion systems cost $245-380/kWh delivered vs. $75-110/kWh for conventional systems – that's 3.3× more expensive with no way to close the gap without massive taxpayer subsidies [8].
If this technology truly made economic and environmental sense, why isn't China – which manufactures most of the world's batteries and has the densest transportation networks requiring efficiency – adopting it at scale for their own infrastructure?
They desperately need cleaner air and water, have explicitly prioritized environmental improvements in recent policy, and would recognize a truly superior EROI technology before anyone. Their purchase behavior speaks very loud.
By your own calculation EROI of Battery buses should be about 15-30 (taking diesel EROI as given as it has no source) if you actually apply the vehicle's efficiency; ~85% efficiency for E2E diesel-generator-to-EV. While diesel bus would be around ~21% effiency.
I directly compared them in visualization 6 ($75-110/kWh conventional vs. $245-380/kWh lithium, all externalities included). Electric ekranoplans would be badass, and sealed motors solve one problem, but battery chemistry is the real beast – we're bumping against molecular bond limitations, not just engineering challenges. Current lithium-ion cathodes are only achieving 25-30% of their theoretical capacity limits, while lithium-sulfur promises 2-3× better density but sacrifices cycle life. Trust me, I want electric propulsion to succeed, but we need fundamental chemical breakthroughs beyond intercalation mechanisms. Got any data on those Soviet experiments? Those Russians were decades ahead on some wild electrochemistry concepts.
Factor in complete system requirements—cooling, casings, and safety systems—that 270 Wh/kg battery delivers only 170-180 Wh/kg of usable energy.
Jet fuel still maintains an 18-19× energy density advantage (3.2 kWh/kg vs. 0.17 kWh/kg) at the system level, which explains the fundamental range limitations we're seeing in electric aircraft development.
For VTOL applications specifically, it demands 2.5-3× more energy per mile than conventional flight, electric air taxi prototypes remain limited to 60-80 mile ranges—impressive engineering, but not yet practical for replacing most aviation applications.
I'm sorry, what? That is an absurd assertion. Batteries are incredibly efficient, like 95-99% discharge efficiency for capacity. They're already bad for this use case, exaggerating it just makes you look bad.
