Thermal sand batteries are a thing, I think?
That was some solution talked about on Undecided.
I read the whole blog-style homepage; assuming it’s genuine, this guy sounds like a hard working compsci grad trying to make his coursework a breakout product so there’s a necessary element of monetization planning. I think it’s fine to pay for a service, rather than free but monetise the data and push ads.
The space is a massive jumble of competing ideals and desires for the replacement right now. Fluxer looks optimistically promising based on the stated desire to be as much of a reverse-engineered open source clone as possible. If that’s what the majority want - a simple drop-in replacement - then it’ll succeed.
Asif Lehrer’s “employees” amount to one other family member and a host of dissolved tiny computer companies according to Companies House, not exactly a pillar of upstanding community business.
Should be stripped of his license for weaponising a vehicle.