I'm wondering if it's a race right now.

John B. Goodenough, the guy who invented Lithium-ion batteries (who also was part of the team that created RAM), is creating Solid State Batteries.

(Dude in the video talks about the Baghdad battery for the first few minutes. Skip to 3:47 for when he starts talking about the Solid State battery.)

Are Solid State Batteries About To Change The World? | Answers With Joe

His name checks out.

The no heavy metals thing is attractive because China basically invested heavily in africa to get their hands on that as a major strategic advantage.

To get the heavy metals? So they're invested in the blood diamond regions where they mine for the contents of our batteries?

And don't forget US's coups. Not that Lithium mine nationalization is the only reason they have for attacking leftist governments.

Australia is trying to position itself as an entrant into the Lithium market (while at the same time federally we're rubbishing energy storage as part of our climate ostrich initiative so you know, that's happening...). Interestingly a major project has recently had trouble getting off the ground as commercially viable despite abundant deposits. I don't know, but would be interested what the story is there.

Regardless, one thing thatd be exciting is if we can find batteries that are more heat stable and longer lasting as viable large-scale storage for renewables ...