Bruh I'm an electrical engineer. I'm interested in new technology and specifically battery technology. I'm not interested in journalists regurgitating mindless research paper fluff. This is just self aggrandizing boosting, not anything meaningful.

Yes, progress in the manufacturing and refining of Lithium Ion batteries.

This is not that. This is a research lab trying a new idea that will go nowhere and then issuing a press release that talks about the positives and ignores the showstopping negatives.

LiFePo4 was first brought up in lab experiments in 1996/1997.

NaIon first came up in the 80s, but were shelved and most research happened in the 2010s.

But as you rightfully noticed: It took Li-Ion Batteries 20 years to become usable and another 20 years to become really good. Why would you expect that other battery technologies would be faster to market? Many other chemistries are on the market but just haven't (yet) become better than Li-Ion.

Battery development is a huge amount of trial and error, and Li-Ion was also a series of throwing things at the wall and seeing what sticks. On the way to develop Li-Ion hundreds if not thousands of chemistries had to be tried, tested and discarded. That specific technology went through multiple companies and research facilities who each discarded the idea when they got stuck and coundn't find a way around the problems, and then the next company picked it up to continue working on it.

I don't expect them to come to market faster than that, I expect people to not believe and post headlines about a battery technology revolutionizing things when it's early stage research and most likely will not.

If you spent your time reading about every novel research battery since the dawn of Li Ion and today, all you'll have succeeded in is wasting a lot of time.

Not any more waste of time than reading 90% of other tech news (or any news in general). It's basically entertainment, not education.

So if I wasted some time reading a interesting article about some prototype technology, I haven't wasted any more or less time than reading some news article about some other topic that doesn't affect me.

I'm not holding my breath that this specific technology will beat Li-Ion in a year and I will not use the article as investment advice, but there's nothing wrong with using it for free entertainment.

Not any more waste of time than reading 90% of other tech news (or any news in general). It's basically entertainment, not education.

I agree, but if I want to read 90% filler I can just pick a tech news site and read everything.

That's what they all say.

My brother in Christ, have you heard about our lord and saviour the Scientific Method and the proliferation of cross-domain ideas? How do you imagine the li-ion batteries came about as the go-to energy storage solution? Incremental improvements of ideas would be my guess, ideas have to start somewhere and of course they’re going to be hyperbolic since researchers are both excited and have to draw attention to their ideas.

I sympathise with your point but the alternative is little to no research into different battery technologies because close to nothing will ever emerge as a competitive day-one drop-in replacement, but some ideas may prove exciting to others who understand the value and they might push the ball further towards realistic alternatives.

I don't fault researchers for publishing novel research that might not go anywhere. I explicitly understand the scientific value in doing so.

I do not think it's valuable to breathlessly regurgitate those claims to the broader pop-sci public though. A) It's boring to read the same overhyped battery press release every single week. And B) it shakes people's faith in science, in the same way that people's faith in medicine has been shaken by bad reporting on every study that says X could give you cancer or make you live longer.