Aren't sodium batteries close to production and a lot cheaper and safer?

Ambri was working on large scale batteries which seemed like a pretty good idea (looks like they ran out of money): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambri_Inc.

Depends on the application - each battery technology has a trade-off between energy density, cost, lifetime, safety, scalability, etc. Sodium may have a place in grid storage, although iron-air is being deployed today and is even cheaper and safer (but poor energy density, which doesn't matter much for grid storage - https://formenergy.com/technology/battery-technology/)

Cheaper yes. Non-aqueous sodium ion batteries (which are most of them) are more dangerous than LiFePO4 though.