> Because that's where the progress was. They simply couldn't make progress on batteries at the time.

That's a descent into circular arguments and post-facto analysis.

The early twentieth century was a golden age of chemistry. We had the technology to do fractional distillation of petrochemicals and synthesise complex organics. To suppose that we could not have punched gigantic breakthroughs in ionic electro-chemistry is blinkered. Motor technology equally so. Sintering, rare-earth alloys, elaborate windings, and complex field analysis was well within the metallurgy and other technologies you describe, without computers.

But there can be no meaningful argument around it if you only hark back to "what was", instead of analysing the interplay between economic motives and progress. We're arguing at cross purposes if you're bringing up "facts" of history, and I'm talking about socio-economic dynamics.

And, more importantly, why?

So we can preserve a comfort that a 100 year journey into fossil fuels was not a colossal human mistake? Rationalising away the narrative that plausible alternative technological pathways existed achieves what exactly?

It's not like can change the past. So what is going on?

> There's a reason we didn't get economically viable and high enough performance batteries for consumer electronics

We didn't get anything. We didn't want them.

I appreciate this philosophy of technology stuff can be disorientating. It is scary stuff. Because if we admit that there are alternatives, that this is not a Panglossian universe and that we've made gigantic errors in the past, that opens up the terrifying possibility that we're making grave errors right now (which I believe we are). The myth of technology as a deterministically unfolding, monotonic mechanism is very comforting in that world.