In the larger discuss is of course, solar panels, and how they can be installed cheaply enough and with enough storage to make it feasible. Vertical integration is the key here and yes it's additional initial capital outlay, but if someone wants to run the numbers, I bet there's somewhere where it makes sense.
He is wrong on the price of electricity by a factor of 100. The LCOE of solar and Bess is below cost of coal in China already ie around $0.04-0.05/kwh. Recently UAE signed a contract for 1 Gwh 24 hour solar and BESS supply for 10 years at around $6 billion which is approximately $0.07/kwh but after 10 years the solar and batteries will still be working at 85-90% capacity cost 0.
I cant say about planes but as far as ocean freight shipping goes we are very close to the tipping point. Battery prices have already reached a point where it is cheaper to go battery electric for small voyages.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-022-01065-y
A bit later, he claims the lifetime cost of a vehicle is $345/kwh. It’s unclear if that’s capacity (an SUV with a $100kwh battery costs $34.5K new, which is the low end of retail pricing, and actually great news), or energy costs (that SUV will cost $34.5M over its lifetime, assuming 1000 charge cycles), which is clearly off by a factor of >100.
Either way, he concludes the time to payoff of switching to the planes is 2/3rds their expected lifetimes. I didn’t get far enough to find out what that’s versus, but most airlines would happily roll over to a new technology that “only” reduced their fleet costs by 33%.
For comparison, the 737 MAX reduced fuel costs by 14% and is still selling despite all the safety issues.
Edit: My 33% math is a bit off. It assumes the fuel costs dominate. Still, payoff before end of life is still saving money.