Having this debate with someone elsewhere. He was arguing for hybrid to relieve range anxiety. My issue with that was you then have to carry on board two different types of engine, two fuel sources and all the associated architecture that entails.
The other challenge is how long the airliner spends on the apron being charged and not generating income. I think electric propulsion for flight is a lot further away than it is for other forms of transport, other than for small aircraft for 3 or 4 passengers.
Autonomous for flight is much nearer though, given it faces few of the technical challenges that self driving cars do, and really only faces the most basic question of passenger trust.
Autonomous flight has been around for quite a while, planes are more than capable of taking off, cruising at altitude and hitting waypoints, and landing automatically in fog or darkness. Problem is that when aircraft do have problems due to sensor or any other failure the pilot's and crew seem pretty much incapable of taking over control - if you want some examples of the problems crew get into and crash perfectly serviceable aircraft with massive loss of life watch ' air crash investigators ' series on tv, it is truly frightening how simple problems turn into nightmares. Modern pilots are highly trained in looking after the computers, but woefully badly prepared to deal with the aircraft once autopilot has disconnected itself due to system malfunctions. As one investigator explained it, pilots are not taught the basics of aircraft handling anymore, and there are no laybys in the sky.
Here is an article calculating the amount of power in Kilowatts ( or more likely megawatts ) needed to get a large airliner airborne and keep it flying. Some truly astounding numbers in there, between 90 and 180 megawatts, imaging the size of battery needed and the size and weights of the motors.
https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/19569/how-many-kilowatts-to-get-an-electric-747-8-airborneAnother thing is, as a normal aircraft flies its fuel load gets lighter and it takes less energy to keep the plane in the air - this does not happen with a battery - so you land with the same load you took off with. Also the safe landing weight of an aircraft is normally a lot lighter than its max take-off weight, that is why planes often have to jettison expensive fuel if they have to land early for any reason.