Extensive efforts have been made to seek new battery chemistries based on multivalent working ions, with the aim to replace the mature lithium-ion batteries. These efforts were initially driven by the pursuit of higher capacity/energy, better safety and lower cost, and more recently have significantly intensified with the increasing concerns over the climate change, the limited resources of Co and Ni, and the anxieties over geopolitical as well as ethical risks of the corresponding supply chain. But how far are we from a practical multivalent battery?

This talk rigorously examines the achievements made in MV batteries as reported in the current literature, while attempting to explore a pathway through the fog-of-war ahead of us.