It really feels like progress in battery tech is unlocking the next "wave" of hardware development. Miniaturization leading to better drones, wearables, cameras, etc., and alt-batteries with better cycle efficiency to better usage of "green" technology. I love seeing these kinds of physical and chemical engineering breakthroughs, even if they aren't quite ready for industrial use.
Battery tech improvement has stayed mostly quiet because we never really had an impressive breakthrough, instead, we had decades of slightly better and slightly cheaper stuff, and it added up. Now we have drones, electric vehicles, grid scale storage, rechargeable batteries so cheap we put them in disposable products, battery power tools that match corded and gas options.
EVs in particular are entirely about batteries. The energy density of fossile fuels is the only thing going for combustion engines. Electric motors are simpler, cheaper, more efficient, more powerful, better for the environment, the only problem is storing the electricity needed to power them. Electric cars actually came before gas cars, that's 19th century tech! The only reason we are only starting to see them back on the roads is because until now, we didn't have good enough batteries.
I expect such research to pay off eventually in the same way. No big breakthrough, but maybe in the future, you will look into buying a new car and realize that that $10k electric car you thought would be useless actually has decent range, that the generator section in the hardware store has been mostly taken over by battery packs and that city buses do not sound the same as they did before.
They essentially both came about at the same time. They were both being actively developed during much of the 19th century, with the first real marketable versions of each coming in the later half of the 1880's.
