You're right that the current state of battery tech is woefully inefficient for any kind of grid-level storage.

But energy can be stored by pumping heated water to deep wells in the bedrock for example or you can use excess power to generate hydrogen and feed it back to the grid via fuel cells when needed. All of this is doable, but also slow to build and currently expensive.

The materials in those batteries can be recycled into new batteries indefinitely.

And when we need to create additional batteries...?

What element in a battery is destroyed during its lifetime that cannot be recycled?

What percentage of batteries are actually recycled? How much energy does recycling them take? What toxic byproducts are produced as part of the recycling process? What will future demand for batteries be, and how long will our supplies of lithium etc. last? Who controls the lithium supplies?

This is not an argument against recycling batteries, by the way. Chemical batteries are a big part of the future, and we should recycle them. But let's not be glib about any of these choices.

Is it possible the raw materials to make these batteries are so abundant right now that it’s much cheaper to just make new ones than recycle old ones?

> They will become "the new oil" in N years.

The existential problem with oil is climate change, not finite resources.