Technology

I highly doubt that Lithium mines have that sort of power. More likely there are either more mundane suspected downsides that aren’t being so breathlessly reported, or simply that it’s too new.

It takes time to switch production lines, and actual demand from battery consumers. Of Lithium Ion is good enough to meet thier requirements than why rush to something that hasn’t been proven in the field yet? If thier already struggling to meet demand with thier current output why risk taking a bunch of lines down to maybe see demand there?

Take CPUs for example, ARM CPUs where kind of a joke 20 years ago, but now they are taking over X86. So its actually not bad working on competing technologies. Even about cars there is an example like that, also maybe 20 years ago battery cars where kind of a joke, while hydrogen fuelcells where all the hype back in the day. While now it seems battery is definitely winning. Although maybe in the next 20 years this turned out to be completely wrong again.

"in the lab" is always a dangerous one. If the Tokyo U people only just demonstrated that hard carbon electrode, then who knows if it can be produced at an industrial scale and if that can be done economically. Even if it can, maybe there is still enough time until production picks up that one more technological refresh on the LiFePO4 production is justified in the mean time.

Besides, there is some inherent inertia, in research, in the markets, in politics. Even if a clear technological winner emerged suddenly some researchers would still have a year or two to finish their grant and publish their findings, some production lines would produce until their eventual superior replacements come online and the stocks would be sold off, and some subsidies would still be payed out until a new law could redirect the funds to only support the acceleration of the new best thing.

Because we don't know for sure what will work. It makes sense to pursue multiple lines of research with the expectation that only one needs to work out.

Sodium-ion chemistry, material sourcing, and manufacturing techniques are still in flux. Longevity is still an issue. They're still a breakthrough innovation, not a solved problem.

As it turns out, capitalism is better at driving iteration than innovation. Research into groundbreaking tech is expensive, risky, and the benefits tend to be spread out over entire industries, so private investors find it difficult to capitalize on (read: privatize) the benefits.

There is still investment in optimizing NMC and LFP batteries not because "big lithium" has its hooks in people, but because low-risk patentable iterative improvement is all the private sector is really good for.

This is why, if you dig deep enough, almost every "world-changing" technology you use today has its roots in government research or grants -- microchips (US Air Force and NASA), accelerometers (Sandia Natl Labs, NASA), GPS (US DOD), touchscreens (Oak Ridge Natl Labs), the internet (ARPA), and even the lithium battery itself (NASA). The list goes on, and it gets particularly impressive when you look at medical breakthroughs.

Today, the US DOE has its net spread wide, funding dozens of different battery chemistries. Argonne Natl Lab is working on Na-ion right now, among others. For mostly political reasons, US-funded research doesn't "pick winners," so they won't ever truly go all-in on one tech.

TL;DR: Na-ion batteries are still a breakthrough technology, so expect funding/research from state actors like the DOE or CATL to push it over the line before the private-sector investment floodgates open.