The fact this report is coming from a commercial enterprise and not a university is pretty encouraging. Obviously it could still just be PR, but they likely wouldn't be touting this unless they expected to bring it to mass production.
Companies lie and exaggerate all the time. It's called PR. It makes no difference whether it comes from a company or university, but companies have much more incentive to lie than universities, especially in technical fields, because they don't have to subject their claims to peer review unlike universities.
I don't think anyone is accusing academics of lying -- academics are just more likely to announce things no industrial relevance. Because industrial relevance is not required for academic relevance.
It depends on what you mean by "more likely to announce things with no industrial relevance". If we are including humanities, then yes. If we exclude humanities, then no. Nearly all current STEM advancements can be traced back to early university work because industries normally do not pay for R&D because of its high risk, low reward effort. Not to mention, it's a money sink.
Even current AI models come straight from university work, intermixed with private industry who often apply these concepts and scale them, but aren't the idea originators.
> Nearly all current STEM advancements can be traced back to early university work because industries normally do not pay for R&D because of its high risk, low reward effort.
“Kevin Shang, senior research analyst at Wood Mackenzie, a data and analytics firm, said that “unfavorable mechanical properties,” as well as the difficulty and cost of mass production, are challenges for moving the application of solid-state oxide-based batteries into smartphones.”
“The group plans to start shipping samples of its new battery prototype to clients from next year and hopes to be able to move into mass production after that.”
So they don’t know yet if they’ll be able to pull off mass production, and it’ll be at least a couple years off.