I totally agree, but I don't find it weird that lithium led for so long. Sure, in theory, sodium-ion batteries are made of inexpensive materials and are easy t

I totally agree, but I don't find it weird that lithium led for so long. Sure, in theory, sodium-ion batteries are made of inexpensive materials and are easy to build. You don't need any nickel, copper or cobalt at all and sodium is dirt cheap. But if you look into it, you'll find many thousands of similar examples across countless fields, where something uses advanced materials or parts when there is a simpler and cheaper alternative. If you ever design for manufacturing, you quickly realize that the key is often not simplicity, the key is identifying and using existing high-volume processes. In other words, don't find the cleanest way to solve your problem; instead, kludge together a solution using off-the-shelf solutions already produced at incredible scale. The problem is that low-cost manufacturing is an art form and is far more complex than anyone realizes. Scale is important, sure, but what you really need is scale+time+intense cost competition. In that environment, it is very hard to start on a significantly different chemistry to compete with lithium-ion. (LiFePO4 is similar enough in manufacturing.) IMO the only place you could start this is China, which would leave BYD and CATL as the only two that could pull it off.