Foo Fighter said:
In my humble opinion, pure battery electric vehicles are a blind alley. Developed on the back of a knee jerk reaction mostly by politicians and dreamers. Hydrogen and fuel cell tech would reduce the weight of battery components and provide a real solution for car, planes, anything. Why we continue to faff with pure battery tech I do not know. Question, how are we going to deal with recycling the number of batteries required for this failure to think in a joined up manner? Will we have to deal with environmental disasters like we potentially could with nuclear waste?
(aero engineer working on battery powered airplanes here)
As far as cars are concerned, hydrogen is not a viable alternative to battery powered vehicles from practical, economical and environmental standpoints. I recommend you check this excellent documentary:
https://youtu.be/f7MzFfuNOtY
Hydrogen cars are already dead (or as Trump would put it, they are a total disaster). You still see a few around because of politics and lobbies. Some groups of people really don't like the idea that you could refuel your car almost (comparatively) for free at home each night.
For airplanes, battery technology is not quite there yet except in some special cases - like VTOL on demand mobility (hey we are staying on topic!) and short range small aircraft such as trainers. While it is only a matter of a few more years before it gets to short haul regionals and freighters - it will be a very long time before it gets to medium to long haul carriers.
As aircraft fuel, Hydrogen has been promising and beaten to death for 30-40+ years and all engine and aircraft manufacturers have given up.
As far as recycling is concerned, you are misinformed. Well designed batteries such as those manufactured by Tesla are 100% recyclable and economically self sustaining due to the high cost of raw materials and due to the original design intent for recycling (unlike many recycling industries). They are also designed to last many years, unlike cellphone batteries.