> Well if we're talking about commercial aviation, we're talking about jet fuel not gasoline. Regardless, it obviously matters a lot. A fully loaded 747 freighter has somewhere around 200 tons of jet fuel and a max payload of about 130 tons.

You only need giant quantities of kerosene for transoceanic or transcontinental travel. The lilium business model requires a range of a few 100 km, which is possible with today's batteries.

Very long distance air travel is impossible with today's commercially available batteries, but is possible with exotic chemistries (see below) or with hydrogen fuel cells.

> This doesn't jive with what I've read. It's my understanding that we're already near the limits of what electrochemistry can give us, and future advancements are likely to come from improved electrode designs, with maybe 2-3x better performance possible if we're lucky.

There are several battery chemistries such as lithium sulfur or lithium air that have extremely high energy densities. But cycle life remains very low, which makes them uneconomical.

There has been decent progress made in improving cycle life, but it is still too low to be economical. There are military applications where a low cycle life is acceptable.