alt Hacker NewsThis seems like a garbled retelling of the shift from NMC batteries to LFP.
The latter are worse on some dimensions, so much so they weren't considered viable for cars in the West. But incremental improvement saw them take over the Chinese market. A classic "low end disruption" story.
They bought up the patents from A123, and American firm with a Taiwanese American MIT researcher founder. The firm floundered in the global financial crisis, a time that is a big inflection point for China's global domination of green tech.