Submitted 3 weeks ago by floofloof@lemmy.ca to technology@lemmy.world
https://cleantechnica.com/2025/10/22/the-sodium-ion-battery-revolution-has-started/
cross-posted from: lemmy.bestiver.se/post/693048
While Sodium-Ion sounds legitimately promising, we’ve all read so many articles about “revolutionary new battery tech” over the years that the default response is “cool, let me know when mass production starts.”
The article is literally about a mass produced $800 Sodium Ion battery that you can buy right now.
Because it’s an ad…you all know that,right?
“cool, let me know when mass production starts.”
(“to the best of my knowledge, that is now, immediately.”)
HiNa opened a 1 GWh sodium-ion battery factory in December 2022. Since then, both BYD and CATL have opened huge sodium-ion battery factories.
Yup. BYD’s 30GWh/year means 1kwh/second!
I can’t resist cancelling the units even though it doesn’t actually make sense because it’s a capacity not a volume, as it were, but that’s a 3.6kw factory!
Did you read the article? This isn’t about a research paper that talks about theoretical lab experiments. Sodium batteries are in real world application right now. Mainly in China and South America.
You can buy sodium batteries from AliExpress. It’s been available for a while. I was thinking about ordering a few but I ended up spending my hobby budget elsewhere. There’s no economies of scale yet for sodium battery tech. You can get the battery but there is zero electronics available for it. Mainly you’d have to design your own charger and battery management modules. That’s out of my pay grade. I’ve been waiting for Chinese engineers to mass produce such things.
You can buy sodium batteries from AliExpress.
You can buy a lot of bullshit from AliExpress.
you’d have to design your own charger and battery management modules
Just searched for “Sodium-ion BMS” on Aliexpress:
screenshot of aforementioned search’s results, showing listings for sodium-ion bms boards for AU$10~AU$40 or so
i hope isdt releases a firmware update for the q6 nano for that if RC sodium ion packs become available.
although afaik energy density per volume and weight isn’t quite there yet
The sub is about technology, not industry. Also, look at the advances in battery technology in the last 30 years. There have only been 3 notable technology advances in the last 40 years from a consumer perspective, but there have been significant advances within each of those major technology changes, resulting in Wh/kg increasing by 6 to 10 times and $/Wh dropping about 99%.
If you want to hear about things that could happen or are about to start happening in industry, this is the right community. If you want to know what you can buy tomorrow, try Amazon.
resulting in Wh/kg increasing by 6 to 10 times and $/Wh dropping about 99%.
And yet, a Tesla model S costs $10,000 more than 2012.
Feels weird to gatekeep that - the des says ‘news or articles’ so an article about some ancient tech isn’t for this community?
Fewer things irritate me more than someone who just hops straight into the comments without actually reading the article first.
Yeah, your ire is justified. Total ADD move to start reading, have a thought pop in your head, then post without at least scanning the rest of the article to make sure you’re not posting something stupid.
Can buy them in relatively small quantities now online.
Yeah, I want to buy a car w/ reduced range at substantially lower prices, but I can’t do that right now. Give me a sub-$20k option to get to work and back and then I’ll get excited about the tech.
I only pay attention if Dr. Goodenough’s name is somewhere in the ecosystem.
HiNa supplied sodium-ion batteries for JAC Motors in 2023. Early batteries had lower gravimetric energy density (145 Wh/kg) and volumetric energy density (330 Wh/liter) than LFP, but sodium-ion batteries have already improved since then. They have outstanding temperature range, yielding 88% retention at -20°C. For reference, the discharge capacity of NMC at 0°C, −10°C and −20°C is only 80%, 53%, and 23% of that at 25°C. The HiNa batteries had a cycle life of 4,500 cycles with 83% retention and a 2C charge rate, but even better sodium-ion batteries are on their way.
These developments point the way to much more. The cost of sodium battery materials is much lower than for any lithium battery. There are no resource bottleneck materials like cobalt or lithium to contend with. In addition, aluminum can be used for electrodes, whereas lithium requires copper for one of the electrodes. Carbon or graphite and separator materials will be similar, but in all other respects, sodium has much lower material costs. Compared to LFP, sodium does not require phosphorous, a substance that is almost exclusively sourced from one state in north Africa, nor lithium, a relatively abundant but more expensive substance than sodium. LFP cannot compete on material costs or temperature range, and both BYD and CATL expect to phase it out first in energy storage.
Early batteries had lower gravimetric energy density (145 Wh/kg) and volumetric energy density (330 Wh/liter) than LFP, but sodium-ion batteries have already improved since then.
OK, and where are the new numbers? 1% better, but still much worse than lfp?
with lfp at about 200 Wh/kg which still is less than Lithium Ion.
LFP is a lithium-ion technology. You probably meant “worse than NMC”, which is another, older, higher density but less safe lithium-ion technology.
As bullish as I am on Sodium-ion batteries, only very recently did researchers figure out how to boost the charge capacity](phys.org/…/2025-10-sodium-ion-battery-breakthroug…), making any attempted commercial models in use so far nice, but not the final form where normies are buying them from Home Depot.
The Sehol car mentioned is a niche configuration of a common model, because the Li-ion model goes farther between charges. Other than the launch in 2023, and articles recycling the same info, find me 1 article that doesn’t use words like “could” or “will” or “might” about sales of this model? Same thing for the BYD Seagull with Na-ion batteries. It’s all greenwashing news where if you dig at it even slightly, you see how not real any of it is.
It’s closer than it was 5 years ago, but it’s still not a “revolution” by any means.
You dropped this [
Thanks - not sure where it went!
This has got to be better than lithium mining.
Sodium ion is great, but
While batteries have enabled passenger car developments, they have been somewhat stymied in large mobile power applications like shipping and electric trucks. That day is gone now. At these costs, electric shipping is achievable and the debate over alternative fuels will fall off quickly as applications are realized.
heavy transport is not the right application. Very heavy, and LFP has similar advantages while only being medium heavy. heating vehicle batteries is a solved problem.
…made-in-china.com/…/China-Grade-a-Catl-EV-Sodium…
Great that you can get a home power 48v 33.6kwh system for well under $3000. (afaik, it comes with connector plates for 112x100ahx3v for $2340. Don’t know about shipping or a box)
For 10% more, on that site, LFP is 33% lighter. Can affect shipping costs.
Sodium ion has extra applications/advantages. Not requiring a heated space could place them under solar panels in the field.
At $100/kwh or less, “retail”, offgrid even oversized solar+ batteries is far cheaper than any utility service. At low charge/discharge rates (4+ hour charge from solar, and 16 hours of discharge (even with 0.25c peak discharge), 10000 cycles is achievable with both chemistries. $0.01/kwh/cycle.
The article has so many acronyms in it, I had to give up reading it. I assume this isn’t just cat like typing?
No, it actually hasn’t. It’s also not any better than any other battery tech out there right now. Longer term but less volume storage is a trade off.
What happened to these Graphene batteries and capacitors we were supposed to have by now?
sodium-ion is better than acid-lead in every use case (theoretically, when the tech reaches maturity), unlikely to beat lithium ion and others for the high-capacity/low weight type stuff but far as cheap/environmentally safe batteries goes sodium-ion should quickly dominate the field.
Yeah, this kind of tech can actually be groundbreaking.
10.000 charge cycles? You can imagine lot’s of new things with that. Maybe not a capitalistic quick buck but something bettering society.
Also for what I have understood it’s wildly better than lipo etc when it comes to resource use, especially “rare” earth.
Here is hoping.
More durable, cheaper, can be operated at a wider temperature range and much safer, but at a cost of lower energy density.
They look like a big step forward for uses where density matters little, like grid energy storage or small scale home backups.
The thing currently costs at least 50% more than the closest equivalent LiFePo4 from the same brand. The only real advantage seems to be it’s ability to handle sub freezing temperatures, but usability still drops dramatically (both capacity and available power delivery). Everything else is straight up worse in this one in direct comparison.
It’s only the first product, so it’ll most certainly get better. Also as numbers of products sold rise, costs fall. Once these are cheaper, that are a real choice.
I got a LIPO4 battery to run my tiny plastic boat or canoe with a trolling motor, most amazing performance I’ve ever seen. Hours of full thrust, never dropped below 20% power. So what’s up with that tech?
10.000 charge cycles.
And cheaper, hopefully.
I think it will displace lead acid use case first where its lighter in the same form factor and more resilient in cold. Already seeing small engine batteries. You can buy a car battery today on amazon but i understand it does play welll with alternator regulators, but that can change with retrofits or automakers adapting smarter regulators.
3kW vibrator?
15m42s
:‘’'(
Normal vibrator…7 weeks.
This just in! Another woman was found profusely gone under the sheets on her bed. This was discovered by a neighbor who kept hearing humming and occasional cat-like death moans. At some point after 7 weeks of this it suddenly stopped prompting the neighbor to visit the victim’s home.
The poor woman is recovering. She is an upholsterer, unrelated to the story, but upholsterers never die, they recover. Leather makers do die. They die a lot.
(6 days, 10h - not counting when it overheats)
Telemachus93@slrpnk.net 3 weeks ago
Nothing factually wrong with the article, but it has this sound of “this technology will solve all our problems” to it that I find highly problematic. Seven out of nine planetary boundaries are exceeded, climate change just being one of them. And all of them are exceeded because of our wasteful and growth-oriented way of life.
Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
We can change our technology to be more sustainable or we can regress to a pre-industrial society with 90% of the population dying in the process. Which do you prefer?
Telemachus93@slrpnk.net 3 weeks ago
That’s a false dichotomy. We can also improve our technology while ditching capitalism.
thinkercharmercoderfarmer@slrpnk.net 3 weeks ago
Question: would I have to give up my exploitative companies that fuel my bid to become the first King of Internet? Because that’s kind of a dealbreaker for me.
unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de 3 weeks ago
The world isnt binary. There are plenty of options in between those two. We could reduce our global emissions drastically without any noticeable difference in quality of life for most people. There is so much junk and single use stuff being produced that we could replace or simply stop producing. Banning all forms of commercial AI would hurt literally nobody except the idiots that decided to make it their career. If governments were serious about fighting climate change they would just take control of large parts of the industry and force them to stop making pointless shit that nobody actually needs.
devfuuu@lemmy.world [bot] 3 weeks ago
Yes.
FlyingCircus@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
How tf does this dumb shit get 15 upvotes?
FlyingCircus@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Because of
our wasteful and growth-oriented way of lifecapitalism.FTFY.
Enkrod@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
I don’t doubt for a moment that humanity can be extremely wasteful in any economic system. But capitalism sure embraces and enhances our worst tendencies.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Partially. It’s more that people don’t click unless the headline is sensational.