You should admit that this market is too complicated for your...

You should admit that this market is too complicated for your mental ability.

When you consider that the price of an EV is "only made possible largely due to cheaper battery costs" you should be thinking of an EV battery like a flying carpet. An EV is still a car/vehicle with many components other than the battery, which normally represents less than 30 % of the total cost of the vehicle.

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/visualized-how-much-do-ev-batteries-cost/

Nailing EV price cuts to cheaper batteries must be some of the rhetorics you warn us about some comentators with hidden agendas.

Don't lie to yourself. Better ranges need batteries with higher energy densities. State-of-the-art sodium batteries from CATL are at 160 Wh/kg.

https://www.fastmarkets.com/insights/chinas-battery-giants-expand-sodium-ion-no-threat-to-lithium/

Current lithium-ion batteries are over 200 Wh/kg, and pilot scale, lithium solid-state batteries are close to 400 Wh/kg:

https://northvolt.com/products/cells/lithium-metal/

And don't forget that lithium is lighter than sodium. So better ranges at lower costs will necessarily include lithium on the batteries. Lower costs will come from economies of scale and a fair market.

Finally, and paraphrasing your last digression:

The fact that SQM, a player who is involved in brines and hard rock, states that its expansion focus will be hard-rock spodumene production, confirms that Li from spodumene, if well operated, are be at the low end of the cost curve and capable of producing BG Li Chemicals.

https://www.australianmining.com.au/sqm-wesfarmers-debut-2-6b-lithium-mine/