It is more battery breakthrough fatigue. Last time I looked there was something like 17 - 18 battery "breakthroughs" over the last 8 years of which exactly one made it into production for a relatively small (10%) improvement in charging performance.
These laboratory curiosities usually fail because either you can't reliably manufacture the precursor material or reliably make the structures needed at production rates (which translates into the cost of the resulting battery)
It came up in a discussion with some Tesla enthusiasts on the ground breaking of the Gigafactory where I wondered if there would be a break through that would make the batteries the Gigafactory would produce obsolete before they finished building the factory. That didn't happen :-).
As a result I recognize its a really hard slow slog through chemistry which is well understood to change batteries. And you're correct there have been a number of improvements in manufacturing which have resulted in incrementally better batteries and that is all good, but so far, starting with a basic battery and making a new battery that is significantly better, has been disappointing.
These laboratory curiosities usually fail because either you can't reliably manufacture the precursor material or reliably make the structures needed at production rates (which translates into the cost of the resulting battery)
It came up in a discussion with some Tesla enthusiasts on the ground breaking of the Gigafactory where I wondered if there would be a break through that would make the batteries the Gigafactory would produce obsolete before they finished building the factory. That didn't happen :-).
As a result I recognize its a really hard slow slog through chemistry which is well understood to change batteries. And you're correct there have been a number of improvements in manufacturing which have resulted in incrementally better batteries and that is all good, but so far, starting with a basic battery and making a new battery that is significantly better, has been disappointing.