I think the author intuitively knew that "A slight difference in electrolyte composition results in dramatically different long term electrode reliability" would not get quite as many page views as the completely false "No one has the slightest idea how and why it works." Especially by carefully phrasing the article such that the "it" refers to a hyper detailed corner case but implies its the entirety of mankinds chemistry knowledge, or at least battery chemistry.

So three good PR lessons:

1) Dramatically exaggerate

2) Confuse pronouns... which "it" is the author writing about?

3) Appeal to ignorance, wave away all that science-y stuff in favor of awe and wonder.

The author of the article is, however, an expert. In chemistry (among other things). And the fact that we know a lot about chemistry of some other batteries does not in any way makes it impossible that we know very little about the chemistry of this specific one.