Solid-state batteries have promised better electric cars for decades. In an industry China dominates, two American companies are making rival bets on how to finally build them BY ALEX PASTERNACK Inside Factorial Energy’s Massachusetts R&D lab, researchers are developing solid-state batteries designed to be produced on the industry’s existing lithium-ion manufacturing equipment. FOR YEARS NOW TIM HOLME HAS WATCHED THE SAME DRAMA REPEAT ITSELF roughly once a week. A headline arrives: some laboratory somewhere has cracked the problem, invented the battery of the future, solved in a paper what industry has chased for decades. …