Sodium ion batteries with energy densities better than Li-ion for long distance passenger cars is most likely in the early 2030’s, at best.
This is NOT the usual timeline because you keep avoiding the elephant in the room.
COST $10 per kWh instead of $100+ and the development work is already done which is why CATL ..the worlds largest battery maker is rolling out full scale production NOW.
2030 is effectively 5 years out….I expect to see a So-ion vehicle available in showrooms in Australia by the end of 2026. It doesn;t matter in the least that Li-ion might have an edge in density when the battery costs 90% less.
China will not stop…. cost is the key, not density or range. Fast charging and range are side benefits
SSB is far more uncertain in terms of scaling out timing but millions of EV scooters and light EV vehicles which are in massive use everywhere except first world, will snap them up.
India alone…..
Key 2024 Scooter Sales Highlights:
Electric Scooter Surge: EV two-wheeler sales (dominated by scooters) reached 1.14 million units in CY2024, a 33% increase from 2023.
Top EV Players: Ola Electric sold over 400,000 units in 2024, while other major players included TVS, Bajaj, and Ather.
Overall Market Growth: Total scooter sales (ICE + Electric) reached a record 6.85 million units in FY2025.
Key Trends: October 2024 saw the highest monthly sales during the festive season.
Market Share: While Honda continued to lead, TVS (1.83 million scooters) and other manufacturers saw strong growth, with a notable shift towards premium and electric models.
Overall, 2024 was a breakout year for the scooter market in India, primarily propelled by rapid adoption of electric models and high demand during festive periods.
There are two distinct physics measures of “energy density”: capacity per weight and capacity per volume. And there’s a third, very important “density” on the economic side: capacity per cost.
@Macdoc is surely right that if cost density really is just 10% of Li-ion, that’ll override a lot of the other sorts of densities unless they’re much, much worse than Li-ion.
For a car or truck if volumetric density is even twice as bad (AKA half as good) as Li-ion, that’s not too big a deal. The more or less standard car design of a large flatpack “skateboard” under the cabin could simply be made thicker. That might favor more SUV-like designs than low-slung sports cars, but EVs already lean that way.
The much larger issue for cars & trucks is energy density per weight. If SSBs weigh appreciably more than Li-Ion for equal storage capacity, now we have a major problem. Range must be sacrificed in a large way.
Conversely …
For scooters, motorcycles, power tools (from e.g. riding mowers down to e.g. power screwdrivers), and aircraft, the volumetric density looms as large, or larger than weight density does.
With all that lead-up, does anyone have any good numbers on how current SSBs line up against current Li-ion on those two measures? Remembering that for both tech’s the density at the cell level, the sub-assembly level, and at the completed as-installed power source level can be very different things.
Also, as I understand it, power density, which is an area sodium batteries have, to date, lagged. That is how fast it can deliver the power - think of capacitors as the opposite end - can move it fast but stores relatively little. And my understanding is that combining sodium batteries with supercapacitors is a few years out.
Those of us who want an EV with the quick acceleration we love won’t likely be thrilled with the initial offerings. The price point will help sell more of them maybe to budget conscious buyers, but many consumers will experience it as a return to selling golf carts as cars.
I’m not holding my breath, or my wallet closed, waiting for a model to be available in America with the performance ability that satisfies even my humble commuter wants (if not needs). If one that does that hits our market within the next five to ten years I’d be very surprised.
Too small of Li doesn’t have enough power to do it.
Plus that gets more complicated which means more cost …
Too be clear, I am not claiming it can’t be done, just doubtful the first incarnations will hit acceptable performance benchmarks for most Western new car buyers.
ETA - what you call bro times I call getting on the highway or passing safely. My bar isn’t muscle car performance. Just a little pep especially midrange speeds.
TLDR: if done by a competent engineering team you will not notice the shortcomings, as they will “design around” them.
but even that is more of a “Electronics system design matter” than pure battery specs:
Say (for discussion’s sake), LiPos can discharge at a 2c rate (twice its capacity (amperes)) whereas the sodium can only discharge at 1c rate. You just design your system around this limitation, putting more cells in parallel (upping the amperage) until you get the same absolute discharge value than you’d get from LiPo. Bear in mind today’s EVs have often 100s of cells and you can fine-tune them by putting them in series or in parallel - so plenty of ways to skin a kid cat.
My main means of transport is an electric scooter, with a 7p14s battery (7 cells in parallel and then put in a series of 14 … you can/could change the characteristics of the scooter by going 8p13s (mo’ powa) or 6p16s (mo’ faster), at your hearts desire…
My layman’s guess will be: the battery will find the application that it is best suited for initially… and then refined.
I am sure that is true. And strongly suspect that those initial applications will not be cars available in the US market. Scooters, yes. Kei trucks, maybe. Some passenger vehicles that will pass regulators muster in India or China and pass consumer performance requirements there for some demographic, probably.
But probably not at a point where EVERYONE considering an EV should sit tight because these things will completely disrupt everything any day.
righty … maybe the answer for the salt-battery is: EV means boats … and cars might be a topic for the 4th generation of the battery, 8 years down the line …
Yesterday, 1,580 electric vehicles were shipped from China and are expected to arrive in Laem Chabang, Thailand, in 7 days. Wish my car could be in it. No photo …Read more
1 day ago — Only seven petrol, 29 hybrid and 98 diesel cars were registered, while more than 2,000 battery electric vehicles (BEVs) were sold. Car sales
There will always be a performance niche but that’s all it will be just as expensive ICE sport cars have and will continue.
The horizon is approaching way fast…of course if you have money to burn go for an expensive Lion vehicle …there are bound to be bargains and even ancient LEAF EVs have a new lease on life with powerful replacement batteries which will soon be cheap.
Your cite is just for Norway, and says that they sold a couple of thousand vehicles total in January, almost all of which were electric. Assuming that sales are the same in all months, that’s maybe 30,000 vehicles in a year. The US, meanwhile, has sales of around 15 million vehicles per year, around 10% of which are electric. Even though our percentage is lower, the US is large enough that we’re still far from a rounding error.
Norway is unusual in that around 90% of cars sold there are EVs and it’s been that way for several years now. Even the other Scandinavian countries don’t have that high of EV penetration.
However, a Norwegian incentive (I don’t know what it was off-hand) to buy EVs expired at the end of December. When incentives expire, they always draw sales to the period right before the expiration. So Norwegian EV sales were exceptionally high in December and exceptionally low in January. Since so many of the car sales in Norway are EVs, that means all car sales in January were way down. So you can’t use January as a typical month for car sales.
FWIW I would be very surprised if BEV autos sold in America are any significant fraction of total global sales. They are not a huge share of American auto sales … yet … and unlikely to grow quickly in the current environment. Meanwhile Asia is a huge market.
Not sure what that matters to the questions of if the technology will deliver on its promise, if the performance will meet what consumers in the West demand, if they will become available in America if and whenever such occurs?
Specifically the initial position that buyers should hold off on a new vehicle purchase because these things are that close to hitting all those steps.
I am open to the possibility the battery will get to adequate auto performance levels and indeed be cheaper. Not a sure thing, promising technologies have fizzled before, but could happen. But getting to the US market (which is where most of potential buyers on this board are) within a couple of years? Nah.
Separate question. The geopolitical implications of this. I suspect other non-Chinese battery companies are also exploring this technology, even if they are not first movers. China losing the power it has regarding rare earths by making them no longer as needed is not something I see as a Chinese desired outcome.
