I had a little discussion with a guy complaining about sodium batteries and how you keep hearing these wild claims and then nothing. I did a quick search and saw an article about a $2 billion partnership agreement to work on a pilot plant for sodium batteries. He claimed it was yet another sensational headline and doubted anything would happen from it. Less than a week later I saw an article about a plant in America being announced.

This stuff is hard. It's not like Master of Orion where you throw money at a specific research and get access upon completion. Different groups around the world are researching a multitude of different ideas, some related, and after a while a bunch of these ideas are combined and associated and researched, and all of a sudden you have a new product that's significantly different from what was available before. And then you see incremental improvements for decades, not unlike the internal combustion engine or rechargeable lithium batteries.