An inconvenient truth about thermoelectrics.

By C. B. Vining. Nature Materials, 2009

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A review of phase change materials for vehicle component thermal buffering (2014, background): “A recent critique of TEG technology identified vehicle waste heat recovery as one of the few power generation applications where thermoelectric usage makes sense relative to more mature conversion technologies, primarily because efficiency of mechanical alternatives is significantly decreased at tha”
Flexible thermoelectric materials and devices (2018, background): “Although the TE properties of inorganic aterials and the efficiency of their corresponding TEG have been ignificantly improved, the thermal to electrical conversion effiiencies is still much lower than that of the maximum possible arnot efficiency [11].”
Material and manufacturing cost considerations for thermoelectrics (2014, background): “These results should be placed in perspective considering the costs of competing electricity generation technologies, especially with respect to the heat source temperature [7,81].”
A review on conductive polymers and their hybrids for flexible and wearable thermoelectric applications (2021, background): “However, considering the relatively low power yield of the present thermoelectric devices, this form of sustainable energy recovery has not yet seen large penetration in the context of the current global energy challenge and related environmental crisis [9].”