Sodium-ion batteries with lower energy/mass ratio, but with high endurance and low cost, which are suitable for stationary applications, like storage for solar energy, are already available commercially.
Googling finds on-line offers for 48-V, 2.5 to 10 kWh batteries at an energy/mass ratio of 89 Wh/kg (a similar battery with lithium-iron phosphate has 133 Wh/kg), i.e. a little less than half of what CATL is claimed to have achieved.
It remains to be seen whether the claims about CATL are true, but the difference between what is claimed and what is already available is not so large as to make the claims incredible.
For stationary applications, the sodium-ion batteries already seem a good choice, due to the much lower price than even the lithium-iron phosphate batteries, which have very similar specifications but seem to be 7 to 8 times more expensive.
Paywalled, but CATL already make 1/3rd of all EV batteries, including some to Tesla. Tesla's main supplier, Panasonic only supplies 9% of global demand so the framing of this as a threat to Tesla is weird.
The US willingly gave up any chance to lead on this tech (and several related areas) to China, to slightly prolong their hydrocarbon industry. An obviously bad decision for multiple reasons.
Another reason is relatively lax environmental laws for rare earth production and electronics manufacturing. Interestingly, to your point, fracking and other hydrocarbon production techniques, are at least as bad if not worse but seem to get a relatively free pass.
That said the advent of a sodium ion technology that’s practical at scale opens the door for competition by decoupling rare earth production from battery costs. Local rare earth saves on tariffs and transportation costs. Sodium earth makes it a raw technological affair and the west is still leading in technological innovation. Manufacturing is already globally spread out for battery production, so raw cost of labor must not be a primary component of cost.
Yes, they are comparing currently available lithium tech to unavailable sodium tech even though lithium is hardly fully optimized. It's certainly the case that sodium development benefits from decades of lithium research
I think it would be the clear preference for all but the highest performance vehicles.
Note that Tesla is also trying to reduce cost in moving to 4680 cells [1]:
> the main reason Tesla is using 4680 batteries at the moment is to cut manufacturing costs, rather than any of the other pie-in-the-sky advantages announced on Battery Day a few years back.
> A Model Y's 4680 pack, for instance, is US$3,600 cheaper to manufacture than one with 2170 cells, but even then Tesla is only halfway through with the cost reduction potential of the new technology. It has yet to master and scale the dry-coating cathode method which would bring the pack's cost down US$5,500 compared to the 2170 battery.
Comparing to LFP the advantages are not that big. It might be cheaper and scale better. Charging speed is now mostly limited by public charger speed and good enough. I expect sodium batteries to have a big impact in cars that cost 25k or less.
Taking out the lithium seems a rather big advantage.
Anyway, it's good to have two promising alternatives to Li-ion,
both of which are clearly superior for home use, and likely for affordable, smaller range EVs as well.
The only significant advantage compared to LFP appears to be the price.
However the price advantage is more than enough. After a short googling, it appears that I could buy right now a battery large enough to supply the energy for one day for my house (5 kWh), either as sodium-ion for $650 or as lithium-iron phosphate for $5000 (with very similar specifications for endurance and size).
The former I could buy at any time, for the latter I would have to save money for some months to be able to afford it. That is a large enough advantage.
That LFP price can't be right. That's $1000/kWh! Batteries have been cheaper than that for at least half a decade. And I'm pretty sure Na-ion (at room temperature) hasn't even hit the market yet! Googling "sodium-ion battery price" just gave me textbooks.
I believe that there might be cheaper LFP, that is why I have written "after a short googling".
$1000 per kWh was the first price that I have found for a 5 kWh LFP battery and I am lazy now to search for a cheaper one, so this is a real price, even if it is likely not the best price.
For a much larger battery, a quick search shows EUR 20000 for 50 kWh, i.e. EUR 400/kWh (though this price is older and now it might have increased). It is normal for the price per kWh to decrease at very large capacities.
Also, the fact that LFP were cheaper than this a decade ago is irrelevant, because googling about their price finds that "lithium prices have surged over 700% since the start of 2021, which has led to a big jump in battery pack prices" (written in May 2022).
However, Na-ion batteries for solar energy storage have certainly already hit the market, e.g.:
EDIT: After an extra search, I have seen an offer for a LFP 5 kWh battery @ $2000, so it looks like the $400/kWh price is available for lower capacities too. Nevertheless, this price is less reliable than the higher prices seen initially, because it is only for some kind of pre-order with unknown delivery time.
You can easily find other brands for less than $300/kWh, and plenty of review/teardowns on youtube.
Edit: adding "Typical capacity at 80% DOD @.5C Rate is over 7000 Cycles" so if you bring your battery to 7000 80% cycles at 0.5C you got 28000 kWh out of it, so 0.059 USD/kWh out of the battery (and you still have 4 kWh usable in the battery so many more cycles).
Yes, that is a good price, but AFAIK all the US prices are quoted without taxes, to make them seem smaller, unlike in most other countries, so with taxes included I assume that the real price is about $400/kWh, which matches the price that I have found meanwhile for a similar battery in UK.
Therefore, the current price for Na-ion batteries is only 3 times less than LFP (the endurance and lifetime are claimed to be about the same for Na-ion and LFP).
Still, this price ratio of 3 remains a significant difference and it is very likely that in the future the price of Na-ion will decrease at a much higher rate than the cost of the mature lithium-based batteries, when more manufacturers will begin to make Na-ion batteries.
It's more about being able to deliver it when many cars are charging. Charging speeds go down considerably. I typically don't get the maximum possible speed and often am far off and sometimes that depends on the number of cars charging.
Your actual limitation when the site is full is usually the utility transformer. Tesla have been installing many 8 stall and even 12 stall sites with 750kVA pad transformers.
If they had a Tesla Megapack as a buffer for example the transformer wouldn’t be the bottleneck as the output is greater from the Megapack.
> Charging speed is now mostly limited by public charger speed and good enough.
Not sure where this is the case. Here, the 250kw chargers are plentiful, but cars average closer to 120kw because of the charge curve. We're still battery limited most of the time.
Those 5 advantages are very important, but you haven’t mentioned its disadvantages which render the advantages less dramatic.
A significant disadvantage is the lower energy density of the sodium battery chemistry. Implications include faster discharge/lower range if the physical dimensions are the same as a lithium battery, or if optimized for more range/power, then it would be a larger and heavier pack vs lithium with the costs that entails.
This lower energy density is one of the main reasons it has been considered more suited to stationary application because the extra space and weight is less problematic than in a mobile applicaiton
China is an immense market for lower-cost EVs. They also do not have as far to drive as most Americans. This battery tech could be less suitable for the US than China and still have an enormous market.
I suspect most Americans don't drive as far as Americans do. I've got a hella commute & it's only 21 miles, each way. Getting to my parents is 55 miles. My in-laws are 205 — but stop for lunch anyways.
It’s not the average drive. The p95 will be a lot higher in North America than China or Europe. Theres also elevation, winters and our obsession with going 70-80mph on highways.
Obsession? The higher the speed the greater the capacity of the road, and when freight has to travel 2000 miles by road, the 10mph/h difference makes a considerable impact on the time. Isn't it the case that Germany completely removes speed limits for some portions of it's "Autobahns?" What "obsession" drives that decision?
There's this assumption that all the negative qualities of road are down to malignable user behavior issues. It's an unusually hostile way to view the problem.
> The higher the speed the greater the capacity of the road
This is false[1]. Stopping distance increases as the square of speed, and therefore safe following distance also. This and other effects mean that 80 mph is well down on 30 mph.
Theoretically capacity should be independent of speed[2], but in practise it seems to decrease at high speeds because most drivers are careful.
The first plot is of a study particular to specific roads and their current configuration in Bangkok.
The second arrives at an equality that I don't fully understand, but applying it's formula shows about a 2.6x greater spacing requirement when moving from 30mph (8.5 ft) to 80mph (22.8 ft). Which is close to what the two second rule would tell you when going from 30mph (88 ft) to 80mph (234 ft).
Interestingly, if you look at actual braking distances, then for 30mph (45 ft) to 80mph (320 ft) shows a 7x change in distances. So, the above advice relies on the fact there will be no fixed obstructions in the road and that anything in front of you will have to brake as hard as you do.
Perhaps this is why pedestrians still do so poorly on the roads, but it also makes me suspicious that you can just apply this formula equally to 30mph traffic and 80mph traffic. The hazards are different, the road duty cycle is different, traffic controls exist on one and barely on the other.
Even so.. using the basic 2.6x capacity reduction factor going from 30mph to 80mph, you're getting a 2.6x capacity increase from the change in speed. As soon as you add _one_ additional lane, the 80mph road makes a bunch of sense.
Building (house, commercial building, factory) and grid four- to eight-hour storage (stationary storage) is potentially a much bigger market than vehicle storage, espcially as processes that now use carbon-intensive fuels are replaced.
The article links to an article from 10/22 stating they filed with regulators intent to produce in 2023, a year they’ve been promoting for at least three years so seems a fairly reliable indicator of ability to produce.
Take the salt, heat it, run current through it. Sodium vapor comes out.
Not exactly "easy", but self-contained. From an environmental point of view sodium is absolutely brilliant compared to lithium. Everyone with access to sea water can produce almost 400 g of sodium from 1kg of common table salt. No lithium mining needed.
Mostly because mining trona (actually Na3H(CO3)2*2H2O) is cheaper than the Solvay process. It's not a matter of possibility, it's just the path of least resistance.
There is no way that CATL is going to escape the US policy of suppressing China's technological development. Batteries are going to follow SC's - very likely next in line - and Tesla's reliance on CATL batteries is the weak point upon which Musk's empire will fall. Destroying CATL will probably set back EV adoption by some years, replacement suppliers will surely be built if industrial policy continues to be applied
Any references towards US policy against CATL? Most battery producers build plants in the local region anyways.
Surely you don’t think China has been a fair partner in technology and business? That perhaps the Chinese state has conducted systematic espionage to favor its local industry development, mandated technology transfer for market access, established unfair trade policies to favor local business development, and suppressed the success of foreign investment that was purchased at the cost of aforementioned technology transfer?
Chemistry will not be determinant regarding which battery technology will prevail. Cost will be primary and endurance will be next. Tesla's 4680 (yes, it's a can, not a chemistry) automated manufacturing technology will be hard to beat in both cost and endurance. And it's just at the beginning of the learning curve of the manufacturing tech. Competitors will have to be prepared to shell out plenty of cash to keep up. Hard not to notice that even Panasonic would not commit to 4680 manufacturing at scale until they could confirm that Tesla's dry anode tech was viable.
Any battery experts have opinions on this chemistry? My understanding is that CATL is a fairly established operation and far along in development -- what are the remaining risks in using this chemistry?
Little is known about CATL's secret sauce. But several other groups have been working on other Na-ion chemistries, mostly for stationary storage which has bigger market potential if the price is right.
Faradion is working on Na-ion for India's vehicle market.
IANAE, but from my very brief topic search last month (~50 hours) the risks are competitive, that some other chemistry turns out to be "better" for a major application or that some other company does it better than you.
There is always the possibility that someone figures out how to make cheap, safe, reliable, durable, high-current, temperature-tolerant and abuse-tolerant X-air (aluminum-air, lithium-air, or some other common metal or anion -air) batteries. The holy grail of max energy density, volumetric and gravimetric.
There are many niches in storage, though, especially in stationary uses. Lifetime cost (10 to 50 years) will dominate for some, sticker (label) price for others.
CATL as the world's largest manufacturer of batteries is covering the entire battery market and different parts of the market have different requirements. It's less about risk and more about having products with different cost and features. They are diversifying their products and opening up new segments of the market.
Sodium ion batteries are interesting because they don't depend on a lot of expensive materials like Lithium and (presumably) don't require a lot of dirty and energy intensive processing. In terms of energy density they are comparable to some of the outdated lithium batteries from a few years ago (i.e. not that impressive but still capable). But in terms of cost, it probably is a massive improvement. And this looks like it should do well in cheap cars as a good enough & cheap enough battery. And of course there is a lot of demand for batteries now beyond cars or transport where energy density simply is not that relevant.
Lab bench to product can be 15 years or more, so doesn’t mean it doesn’t work.
The other hard thing is beating Li-Ion. It would have to be a lot better or cheaper to beat the economy of scale. Just a little better won’t displace the incumbent.
That's the thing: Lithium ion batteries are not a fixed technology, they're a moving target. They've evolved dramatically and encompass many different chemistries since they first appeared in the lab in the 70's. But since they're all grouped under the name "Lithium ion" people just think of them as a fixed, static, mature technology.
CATL is the world’s biggest EV battery manufacturer, and they’re planning to mass produce these batteries in the next few months. This isn’t your run of the mill university research press release.
I do not care for their promo graphics of 10kwh sitting exposed alongside the exterior wall. Were I in a position to be constructing a battery backup, it is going to get its own dedicated concrete shed, separated as far as possible from the house.
Ha, well GM did inform Bolt owners to stop parking next to the house, so maybe there is something to that logic.
Concentrated energy by any other name is a bomb. At least with gasoline, I am fairly confident if/when/where an ignition occurs. With an electronic device with embedded firmwares, I just have to hope that the failsafes are operating.
Sodium ion is much safer. Electrolytes in it may still be flammable, but CATL says there should be no thermal runaway or spontaneous combustion like Lithium-Ion. They’re also safer to ship without the hazmat warnings in the packaging.
For comparison, a gallon of propane is equivalent to 27Kwh[0] so that 20 lb cylinder contains about 124 Kwh equivalent. Now that's not something I'd keep inside the house but it's not too far away.
I’m more worried that $5k savings per EV will translate to $500 per EV for the end customer.
More than anything, I welcome the switch away from lithium for both economic and environmental reasons.
I think one underlying current is market prediction - i.e. if CATL's solution is more widely available as a supplier to the larger market, will they eventually "TSMC" Tesla's battery tech?
It would have been nice if you did read the article before commenting. You might be right about HN and battery articles, most of the time, but in this case it's quite a credible technology and manufacturer.
"Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that". "
While it's not actually in customers hands, there are two things that make this story different from most:
* This isn't a research lab announcing, or even an R&D department. This is a large, respected battery manufacturer announcing an imminent mainstream product
* The date for being in customers hands is 2023. This isn't the usual "we just need to work out how to manufacture it and then maybe in 10 years". Next year means "we have this production process worked out and are ramping up as we speak".
This would be one you can see, buy (from the largest battery manufacturer in the world), and generally be all over of pretty soon. Catl took one of the battery chemistries that you've been reading about and are casually dismissing and made it work.
It's a bit of a meme on HN that things aren't real or worth talking about until it solves all your imaginary problems is being mass produced, etc. Of course this is a website run by Y combinator with a diverse audience of technologists, startup people, investors, and generally people interested in learning about new things that might be disruptive, revolutionary, etc. Yes, there are a lot of new battery chemistries. And quite a few of them look like they might eventually make a big difference with some further investments. And most of those are highly of interest to both VCs that are investing in these things and, people involved with other startups in the same space, or people like me that like the idea that there are people out there working on solving some of the harder challenges in this world.
> CATL recently stated that they aim to get their sodium-ion battery into production in 2023 and are already talking with manufacturers about using it in their cars. Ultimately, it seems like CATL is ready to take centre stage in the EV battery race and cause a revolution.
This is a major manufacturer claiming plans to begin production in the next year and to already be in sales talks.
This is pretty far along the “How real is it” spectrum and a major bump for sodium chemistry batteries which last i knew were more in the “lab stage with major drawbacks”
I've been following the developments around this chemistry since the time Tiamat announced their sodium-ion battery and it appears that in this case it's not all sunshine and rainbows:
The article begins with a photograph of "A CATL battery pack on display at the IAA Transportation show in Hanover, Germany, on Monday, Sept. 19, 2022".
The article does not say whether the pictured battery pack is one with Na-ion or just some random battery pack that does not have any relationship with the article.
If the battery pack displayed at Hanover had been a Na-ion, then it would have been weird for CATL to show it if they had discovered problems that would have prevented its production. Also, the article says that CATL have announced last month again that they will start the production in 2023. It would be weird for them to discover just now problems that have not been discovered earlier.
After this introduction, the article says repeatedly that despite what CATL hoped, the Na-ion batteries are not good, but then the article fails to provide even a single logically-coherent sentence that says what exactly is not good about them.
Until anyone else provides some real information about what might be wrong about the CATL Na-ion batteries, this Bloomberg "analysis" can be safely ignored.
There is no doubt that the Na-ion batteries can work fine at energy/mass ratios somewhat lower than lithium-iron phosphate batteries.
CATL claims that they have found some means to increase the energy/mass ratio to a value intermediate between that of LFP and that of lithium-nickel/cobalt batteries.
It is possible that whatever they have done could affect negatively other battery parameters, but with the possible exception of the lifetime, such problems should have been identified much earlier and CATL should not have continued to say that everything is on track, so even as a rumor report that lacks any concrete information the Bloomberg "analysis" looks more like wishful thinking than like anything plausible.
The few numbers given in the "analysis" are wrong. It is said that Na-ion would need an 8 times increase in energy density, which is a claim that would be valid only about the ancient lead-acid batteries. Na-ion needs only a 2 times ... 2.5 times increase in energy density to become competitive in transportation applications.
There is some nonsense claim about Na-ion batteries "in certain formulations", which, even if it were true, would say nothing about the CATL batteries, because those do not use those "certain formulations", whichever those might be.
I have rarely read any article so illogical as this one.
I pay extra attention to such articles because even the worst smear piece has to hinge on something.
The fact of the matter is that CATL hit some kind of yet unidentified roadblock and LFP made amazing progress in parallel and may sweep the market as a generally worse, but immediate solution.
It will be still CATL manufacturing it, so they win regardless though.
I'm especially cautious after almost a decade ago zinc-air was showing promise as a low-cost battery, but that never really went anywhere.
Why does the article do a head to head comparison between the new battery and a "generic" Lithium battery.. and then later we see the specs of the Tesla battery and it is just about identical with the new battery.. but you know.. more energy dense and in production. The differences seem to be more in the rounding range. Sure.. twice the milage.. but show me a car where this matters past 500k. Always clickbait.. Now compare this to some Tesla battery still in R&D...
I'd really like to know how to buy their cells or get custom packs as a small volume vehicle manufacturer. AFAICT they're impenetrable unless you're a very large customer.
Reliance in India is planning on manufacturing sodium ion batteries as well, and purchased Faradion - a startup that was designing sodium ion batteries, for this purpose.
95 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 174 ms ] threadGoogling finds on-line offers for 48-V, 2.5 to 10 kWh batteries at an energy/mass ratio of 89 Wh/kg (a similar battery with lithium-iron phosphate has 133 Wh/kg), i.e. a little less than half of what CATL is claimed to have achieved.
It remains to be seen whether the claims about CATL are true, but the difference between what is claimed and what is already available is not so large as to make the claims incredible.
For stationary applications, the sodium-ion batteries already seem a good choice, due to the much lower price than even the lithium-iron phosphate batteries, which have very similar specifications but seem to be 7 to 8 times more expensive.
The US willingly gave up any chance to lead on this tech (and several related areas) to China, to slightly prolong their hydrocarbon industry. An obviously bad decision for multiple reasons.
That said the advent of a sodium ion technology that’s practical at scale opens the door for competition by decoupling rare earth production from battery costs. Local rare earth saves on tariffs and transportation costs. Sodium earth makes it a raw technological affair and the west is still leading in technological innovation. Manufacturing is already globally spread out for battery production, so raw cost of labor must not be a primary component of cost.
Li-ion batteries generally don't contain rare earths.
- charge twice as fast as lithium ion
- have double the number of charge cycles
- cost substantially less
- be substantially safer
- and more environmentally friendly
I think it would be the clear preference for all but the highest performance vehicles.
Note that Tesla is also trying to reduce cost in moving to 4680 cells [1]:
> the main reason Tesla is using 4680 batteries at the moment is to cut manufacturing costs, rather than any of the other pie-in-the-sky advantages announced on Battery Day a few years back.
> A Model Y's 4680 pack, for instance, is US$3,600 cheaper to manufacture than one with 2170 cells, but even then Tesla is only halfway through with the cost reduction potential of the new technology. It has yet to master and scale the dry-coating cathode method which would bring the pack's cost down US$5,500 compared to the 2170 battery.
[1] https://www.notebookcheck.net/Tesla-4680-vs-2170-battery-cel....
However the price advantage is more than enough. After a short googling, it appears that I could buy right now a battery large enough to supply the energy for one day for my house (5 kWh), either as sodium-ion for $650 or as lithium-iron phosphate for $5000 (with very similar specifications for endurance and size).
The former I could buy at any time, for the latter I would have to save money for some months to be able to afford it. That is a large enough advantage.
$1000 per kWh was the first price that I have found for a 5 kWh LFP battery and I am lazy now to search for a cheaper one, so this is a real price, even if it is likely not the best price.
For a much larger battery, a quick search shows EUR 20000 for 50 kWh, i.e. EUR 400/kWh (though this price is older and now it might have increased). It is normal for the price per kWh to decrease at very large capacities.
Also, the fact that LFP were cheaper than this a decade ago is irrelevant, because googling about their price finds that "lithium prices have surged over 700% since the start of 2021, which has led to a big jump in battery pack prices" (written in May 2022).
However, Na-ion batteries for solar energy storage have certainly already hit the market, e.g.:
https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/SUNPOK-48V-5kwh-Sodiu...
EDIT: After an extra search, I have seen an offer for a LFP 5 kWh battery @ $2000, so it looks like the $400/kWh price is available for lower capacities too. Nevertheless, this price is less reliable than the higher prices seen initially, because it is only for some kind of pre-order with unknown delivery time.
https://www.currentconnected.com/product/sk48v100/
You can easily find other brands for less than $300/kWh, and plenty of review/teardowns on youtube.
Edit: adding "Typical capacity at 80% DOD @.5C Rate is over 7000 Cycles" so if you bring your battery to 7000 80% cycles at 0.5C you got 28000 kWh out of it, so 0.059 USD/kWh out of the battery (and you still have 4 kWh usable in the battery so many more cycles).
Therefore, the current price for Na-ion batteries is only 3 times less than LFP (the endurance and lifetime are claimed to be about the same for Na-ion and LFP).
Still, this price ratio of 3 remains a significant difference and it is very likely that in the future the price of Na-ion will decrease at a much higher rate than the cost of the mature lithium-based batteries, when more manufacturers will begin to make Na-ion batteries.
If they had a Tesla Megapack as a buffer for example the transformer wouldn’t be the bottleneck as the output is greater from the Megapack.
In other words, most cars.
"Americans remain resistant to the lure of EVs, which are still unaffordable": https://arstechnica.com/cars/2022/11/only-1-in-3-americans-w...
Not sure where this is the case. Here, the 250kw chargers are plentiful, but cars average closer to 120kw because of the charge curve. We're still battery limited most of the time.
Time will tell if sodium batteries can be competitive, I don't know that it's clear yet.
A significant disadvantage is the lower energy density of the sodium battery chemistry. Implications include faster discharge/lower range if the physical dimensions are the same as a lithium battery, or if optimized for more range/power, then it would be a larger and heavier pack vs lithium with the costs that entails.
This lower energy density is one of the main reasons it has been considered more suited to stationary application because the extra space and weight is less problematic than in a mobile applicaiton
There's this assumption that all the negative qualities of road are down to malignable user behavior issues. It's an unusually hostile way to view the problem.
This is false[1]. Stopping distance increases as the square of speed, and therefore safe following distance also. This and other effects mean that 80 mph is well down on 30 mph.
Theoretically capacity should be independent of speed[2], but in practise it seems to decrease at high speeds because most drivers are careful.
1. Plot of safe capacity vs speed: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Safe-road-capacity-for-c...
2. https://civilengineering-softstudies.com/57-traffic-capacity...
The second arrives at an equality that I don't fully understand, but applying it's formula shows about a 2.6x greater spacing requirement when moving from 30mph (8.5 ft) to 80mph (22.8 ft). Which is close to what the two second rule would tell you when going from 30mph (88 ft) to 80mph (234 ft).
Interestingly, if you look at actual braking distances, then for 30mph (45 ft) to 80mph (320 ft) shows a 7x change in distances. So, the above advice relies on the fact there will be no fixed obstructions in the road and that anything in front of you will have to brake as hard as you do.
Perhaps this is why pedestrians still do so poorly on the roads, but it also makes me suspicious that you can just apply this formula equally to 30mph traffic and 80mph traffic. The hazards are different, the road duty cycle is different, traffic controls exist on one and barely on the other.
Even so.. using the basic 2.6x capacity reduction factor going from 30mph to 80mph, you're getting a 2.6x capacity increase from the change in speed. As soon as you add _one_ additional lane, the 80mph road makes a bunch of sense.
I'm searching but haven't yet found the goods.
https://www.caixinglobal.com/2022-10-25/catl-aims-to-mass-pr...
Not exactly "easy", but self-contained. From an environmental point of view sodium is absolutely brilliant compared to lithium. Everyone with access to sea water can produce almost 400 g of sodium from 1kg of common table salt. No lithium mining needed.
More info: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downs_cell
Surely you don’t think China has been a fair partner in technology and business? That perhaps the Chinese state has conducted systematic espionage to favor its local industry development, mandated technology transfer for market access, established unfair trade policies to favor local business development, and suppressed the success of foreign investment that was purchased at the cost of aforementioned technology transfer?
Faradion is working on Na-ion for India's vehicle market.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium-ion_battery#Commerciali...
There is always the possibility that someone figures out how to make cheap, safe, reliable, durable, high-current, temperature-tolerant and abuse-tolerant X-air (aluminum-air, lithium-air, or some other common metal or anion -air) batteries. The holy grail of max energy density, volumetric and gravimetric.
There are many niches in storage, though, especially in stationary uses. Lifetime cost (10 to 50 years) will dominate for some, sticker (label) price for others.
Sodium ion batteries are interesting because they don't depend on a lot of expensive materials like Lithium and (presumably) don't require a lot of dirty and energy intensive processing. In terms of energy density they are comparable to some of the outdated lithium batteries from a few years ago (i.e. not that impressive but still capable). But in terms of cost, it probably is a massive improvement. And this looks like it should do well in cheap cars as a good enough & cheap enough battery. And of course there is a lot of demand for batteries now beyond cars or transport where energy density simply is not that relevant.
I will believe it when I see it
The other hard thing is beating Li-Ion. It would have to be a lot better or cheaper to beat the economy of scale. Just a little better won’t displace the incumbent.
https://www.bluettipower.com/pages/ces-2022
https://www.bluettipower.com/pages/ces-2022
I agree with the danger of lithium batteries, I wouldn’t want it attached to my house either!
Concentrated energy by any other name is a bomb. At least with gasoline, I am fairly confident if/when/where an ignition occurs. With an electronic device with embedded firmwares, I just have to hope that the failsafes are operating.
[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/15/gm-advising-some-bolt-ev-own...
[0] https://www.blossmangas.com/knowing-the-numbers-propane-vs-e....
So long term I would expect more savings not less.
> It seems like CATL has made a near-perfect EV battery. So should Tesla be worried? ...
Not sure how 160Wh/kg equates to perfection.
News.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
* This isn't a research lab announcing, or even an R&D department. This is a large, respected battery manufacturer announcing an imminent mainstream product
* The date for being in customers hands is 2023. This isn't the usual "we just need to work out how to manufacture it and then maybe in 10 years". Next year means "we have this production process worked out and are ramping up as we speak".
It's a bit of a meme on HN that things aren't real or worth talking about until it solves all your imaginary problems is being mass produced, etc. Of course this is a website run by Y combinator with a diverse audience of technologists, startup people, investors, and generally people interested in learning about new things that might be disruptive, revolutionary, etc. Yes, there are a lot of new battery chemistries. And quite a few of them look like they might eventually make a big difference with some further investments. And most of those are highly of interest to both VCs that are investing in these things and, people involved with other startups in the same space, or people like me that like the idea that there are people out there working on solving some of the harder challenges in this world.
> CATL recently stated that they aim to get their sodium-ion battery into production in 2023 and are already talking with manufacturers about using it in their cars. Ultimately, it seems like CATL is ready to take centre stage in the EV battery race and cause a revolution.
This is a major manufacturer claiming plans to begin production in the next year and to already be in sales talks.
This is pretty far along the “How real is it” spectrum and a major bump for sodium chemistry batteries which last i knew were more in the “lab stage with major drawbacks”
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-11-06/catl-s...
I could not read it on Bloomberg, but the same article seems to be also available at:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/are-investors...
The article begins with a photograph of "A CATL battery pack on display at the IAA Transportation show in Hanover, Germany, on Monday, Sept. 19, 2022".
The article does not say whether the pictured battery pack is one with Na-ion or just some random battery pack that does not have any relationship with the article.
If the battery pack displayed at Hanover had been a Na-ion, then it would have been weird for CATL to show it if they had discovered problems that would have prevented its production. Also, the article says that CATL have announced last month again that they will start the production in 2023. It would be weird for them to discover just now problems that have not been discovered earlier.
After this introduction, the article says repeatedly that despite what CATL hoped, the Na-ion batteries are not good, but then the article fails to provide even a single logically-coherent sentence that says what exactly is not good about them.
Until anyone else provides some real information about what might be wrong about the CATL Na-ion batteries, this Bloomberg "analysis" can be safely ignored.
There is no doubt that the Na-ion batteries can work fine at energy/mass ratios somewhat lower than lithium-iron phosphate batteries.
CATL claims that they have found some means to increase the energy/mass ratio to a value intermediate between that of LFP and that of lithium-nickel/cobalt batteries.
It is possible that whatever they have done could affect negatively other battery parameters, but with the possible exception of the lifetime, such problems should have been identified much earlier and CATL should not have continued to say that everything is on track, so even as a rumor report that lacks any concrete information the Bloomberg "analysis" looks more like wishful thinking than like anything plausible.
The few numbers given in the "analysis" are wrong. It is said that Na-ion would need an 8 times increase in energy density, which is a claim that would be valid only about the ancient lead-acid batteries. Na-ion needs only a 2 times ... 2.5 times increase in energy density to become competitive in transportation applications.
There is some nonsense claim about Na-ion batteries "in certain formulations", which, even if it were true, would say nothing about the CATL batteries, because those do not use those "certain formulations", whichever those might be.
I have rarely read any article so illogical as this one.
The fact of the matter is that CATL hit some kind of yet unidentified roadblock and LFP made amazing progress in parallel and may sweep the market as a generally worse, but immediate solution.
It will be still CATL manufacturing it, so they win regardless though.
I'm especially cautious after almost a decade ago zinc-air was showing promise as a low-cost battery, but that never really went anywhere.
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/alexandergirau_are-investors-...
[ ] it is impractical to manufacture at scale.
[ ] it will be too expensive for users.
[ ] it suffers from too few recharge cycles.
[ ] it is incapable of delivering current at sufficient levels.
[ ] it lacks thermal stability at low or high temperatures.
[ ] it lacks the energy density to make it sufficiently portable.
[ ] it has too short of a lifetime.
[ ] its charge rate is too slow.
[ ] its materials are too toxic.
[ ] it is too likely to catch fire or explode.
[ ] it is too minimal of a step forward for anybody to care.
[ ] this was already done 20 years ago and didn't work then.
[ ] by this time it ships li-ion advances will match it.
[ ] your claims are lies.
Níngdé Shídài (aka CATL ) is a credible, multibillion dollar company.