Sodium ion battery: e-car finally affordable

Lithium is scarce and expensive. Fortunately, the first much cheaper sodium ion battery is now being produced.

Why do we use lithium for everything?

In theory, lithium is the ideal battery material. Lithium is a small and light alkali metal that floats on water. Lithium is also very reactive, so you can put a lot of energy into it. No wonder lithium-ion batteries have really taken off and you can find them everywhere: from your smartphone to rechargeable drills and electric cars. But there is another type of battery, the sodium ion battery.

Lithium quite scarce

Lithium has some significant drawbacks. The main one is that lithium is scarce. Only 0.002 percent of the earth consists of lithium and 1-2 kg of this can easily be extracted per earthling. With hanging and strangling, that is enough for a small car battery. And then lithium has other applications, such as e-bikes, of course.

Another disadvantage is that lithium batteries are dangerous if opened. For example, there was recently a fire in a New York apartment, which was caused by people who handled lithium batteries from e-bikes rather stupidly. To make matters worse, you also need other metals, which are even scarcer than lithium. Think of metals such as nickel, manganese and cobalt. Could you also build sodium ion batteries instead of lithium ion?

Sodium present in huge amounts

Fortunately, lithium has a heavier brother, the alkali metal sodium, which is not scarce at all. On the contrary! Everyone has a few ounces of sodium in their home in the form of table salt. Our oceans are infested with salt water. Salt consists of 40% sodium.

We are more likely to have too much salt than too little, which has solved the scarcity problem in one fell swoop. So if we could make sodium batteries, the sodium ion battery, the cost would drop dramatically. And can we raise every inhabitant of the earth to a Western standard of living without any problems.

Now finally a breakthrough of the sodium ion battery

The reason that sodium batteries were not widely used is that there were quite a few technical obstacles. A number of researchers have now managed to overcome these hurdles. The huge Chinese battery manufacturer CATL has a lot of confidence in it. They have now started a production line for the sodium ion battery.

Sodium ion battery makes electric cars much cheaper

CATL is huge. This company alone controls more than 30% of the entire market for batteries for electric cars. If such a huge market party uses its resources to produce the sodium ion battery in enormous volumes, then these batteries will just come. And the first electric cars with sodium ion batteries are already on the road. CATL will deliver the first large quantities in 2023 and is already working on the successor, which should store 200 Wh instead of 180 Wh per kilo.

Safer, and also work in frost

So we can now expect many cheaper electric cars to come onto the market in the coming year, because the largest cost item, the electric battery, is finally becoming affordable. Electric cars are much simpler than petrol cars, which means that prices can really drop enormously in the coming decades. Far below the cost of a petrol car, even.

Technically, sodium ion batteries have even more advantages. For example, they are much safer than lithium ion batteries. Their sensitivity to temperature is also much smaller. This more than compensates for the somewhat lower energy density.

Sodium ion battery brings good life to everyone

If the whole world wants to have a Western standard of living, we don’t have enough lithium for that. But we do have plenty of sodium, so we can share the benefits of technology with everyone, no matter where you live in the world. Because with good and cheap sodium ion batteries we can make the whole world, even now poverty-stricken countries, run like a charm.