Since BMW canned their CEO over EV strategy five years ago, all execs at mainline auto have been on notice and been actively pressured as to EV strategy by major investors.

A go-to strategy was to declare plans, but all the economic scaling of those vehicles seemed to come down to 1) solid state becoming viable and 2) OEM battery building supply.

Toyota has blown the solid state deadline a half dozen times already, even when they were pushing Hydrogen (another canary in the coal mine piece of bullshit from a clueless CEO).

So yes, I agree that solid state investment has just been "investor relations" and "CEO job maintenance" tasks, and nothing that really carries water.

I do think the Tesla battery advantage is in trouble now that the Chinese are ramping key LFP/Sodium Ion production with practical densities that will truly power the mainstream EV that will be far under the drivetrain cost of ICE.