This is important for a few reasons. These batteries cost less because they don't rely on lithium. Sodium is extremely abundant and takes little energy to mine and refine. But more importantly, they last much longer and they work in very cold temperatures.
this post was submitted on 21 Sep 2025
89 points (98.9% liked)
Electric Vehicles
1746 readers
130 users here now
Overview:
Electric Vehicles are a key part of our tomorrow and how we get there. If we can get all the fossil fuel vehicles off our roads, out of our seas and out of our skies, we'll have a much better environment. This community is where we discuss the various different vehicles and news stories regarding electric transportation.
Related communities:
- !automotive@discuss.tchncs.de
- !avs@futurology.today
- !byd@lemmy.world
- !ebike@lemm.ee
- !energy@slrpnk.net
- !geely@lemmy.world
- !micromobility@lemmy.world
- !polestar@lemmy.ca
- !rivian@lemmy.zip
- !teslamotors@lemmy.zip
- !xiaomi@lemdro.id
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
And I'll believe it when I see it, rather than a press release of promises which is basically a paid ad to hitch investors.
This kind of disinterested cynicism is toxic.
You can buy sodium batteries from this company, right now, on Alibaba.
They're the world's biggest battery manufacturer, that's like doubting Samsung when they talk about the feature of their next smartphone.
I'm not that tech savvy: what is the average Li-ion density?
This is from memory, but i think it's approximately accurate, especially in relations to each other:
Li-ion have 280-320 Wh/kg but they have the disadvantage that they're explosive. If you get in an accident and the battery gets damaged, it explodes rather violently, and you don't want that for safety reasons.
Then there's LFP batteries which also contain Lithium as the main ingredient, but they have the advantage that they don't explode when they're damaged. They have 220-250 Wh/kg.
Then there's Na-ion, which also have the advantage of not exploding when damaged, and they have 160 Wh/kg (depending on type, new types with better energy density are being actively researched right now). They have the additional advantage of not containing Lithium (Li), instead they contain Sodium (Na), which is significantly cheaper and more widely available worldwide. So the batteries have the prospect of being much cheaper, especially if produced in large scales, and that's really the main advantage they have.
It's not so much about Wh/kg for stationary applications (like grid stabilization or home storage), instead it's about Wh/$, i.e. how much storage capacity you get per dollar. And that is significantly higher for Na-ion than for Li-ion or LFP.
A tank of gasoline is far more likely to explode with 10x more energy.
Unfortunately I can't seem to refill my tank by passing in excess electricity. Pretty sure I can recharge the battery more than 10 times and get more energy over lifetime of usage
i'd say it's equally likely, and yes, internal combustion engine vehicles are literally madness. it's a miracle anybody actually uses these machines, IMO. they sound insane.
Not equally, much more likely as a function of distance driven. If we had started with EVs and considered transition to gasoline, people would have considered it insanely dangerous.
That not even considering the ships, tanker cars and trucks blowing up, sometimes taking out entire cities.
What truck has taken out an entire city? We did pretty much transition from EVs to ICE, EVs have been around at least as long as ICE vehicles.
EVs explode at about 1/40th the rate of combustion vehicles. They are 40 times less likely to explode.
Easy peasy to set 96kwh of these on the side of my house or in a utility closet and I'll basically never experience a blackout or loss of power again.
I didn't know either but Wikipedia says 1–270 W⋅h/kg for specific energy. It lists energy density in litres.
The ones typically used in cars are listed as 90–160 [Wh/kg].
Sodium chemistry works well down to -20C , they don't drop off in efficiency like lithium.
Interesting that it took so long. I assumed that Sodium-ion would have hit the mass market one or two years ago when CATL announced they started mass-producing these cells in 2023.
For example, Yiwei debuted its first sodium-ion battery in an electric car in late 2023.
You can order So-Ion cells on AliExpress since a year or so, that sounds reasonably mass-market to me.
That's true, but they had almost no success in the automotive world up until next year (probably).
Their properties make them a great fit for grid storage, so even if they never become a thing in the automotive world, they still can become a hit.
I must admit that I didn‘t even think of any applications of this battery tech outside of the mobility sector.
It must be a question of what "mass market" mean? I've been to sodium battery installations using CATL batteries and I'm rather far from any of the markets that are hot spots...
I mean does anyone either bother reading the press releases?
They're shipping packs for assembly into vehicles to Europe q1 2026
I guess the thing is that installing batteries at a large scale only really makes sense when you have a lot of excessive solar energy that you want to store, and we're simply not there yet. China produces sth like 10% of its electricity from solar these days, and that's simply not excessive enough to make it worthwhile to store the excess solar energy production. It's all consumed immediately, almost. Only when we hit like 50% solar energy generation, will there be excesses significantly enough to consider storing them, is my guess.