Sodium Ion looks like it trades some weight and efficiency for a whole lot of nice traits. Substantially less expensive, much less reliant on scarce and problematic minerals, it uses one of the most abundant elements on earth, it doesn't catch fire, it can be abused (down to ZERO volts!), and it can be cycled many more times than lithium ion.
China is already rolling it out in their Seagull EV which is $11,000. I think this could be revolutionary for low end to midrange cars.
I wonder if this could be paired with dasalinization plants. Desalinization is going to become a bigger and bigger thing as climate change intensifies droughts, prevents snowpacks from forming, and shifts precipitation patterns. Many cities are established based on historical climactic and hydrological factors that are now obsolete.
Desalinization at a large scale destroys marine ecologies because it dumps hyper salinated brine back into the ocean which smothers life on the seafloor. Perhaps the waste product could be recaptured and put to use in batteries instead.
Pretty good video on explaining the challenges in batteries chemistries.
Its interesting from an EV point of view, but seems way more useful for stationary power storage options. Cars really so benefit from the reduced weight relative to available power stored, but stationary grid type storage you can build vertically if you need more space and the extra weight doesn't really matter.
There are several interesting battery types coming out in the next 5 or so years that will leave us 10 years from now wondering why we ravenged the earth for crude lithium sourced car batteries.
Quote from: r0tor on May 15, 2023, 06:30:54 AMThere are several interesting battery types coming out in the next 5 or so years that will leave us 10 years from now wondering why we ravenged the earth for crude lithium sourced car batteries.
There's always new batteries "right around the corner". Sometimes they happen, most of the time they don't. :huh:
Quote from: CaminoRacer on May 15, 2023, 09:24:12 AMThere's always new batteries "right around the corner". Sometimes they happen, most of the time they don't. :huh:
Pretty strong indication the first sodium and solid state batteries will hit cars in the next year
Quote from: r0tor on May 15, 2023, 10:44:00 AMPretty strong indication the first sodium and solid state batteries will hit cars in the next year
To what end?
Viability of a product has a lot of factors built into it that will either make it successful or not. There is no way to predict future viability of these products. They are palatable as long as there is cash from consumers to continue to pay for them. The increase in electrical demand has to be answered from somewhere eventually.
It's a lot of hype and ultimately fails to deliver in reality. There are limits to the technology and acknowledging its limits is actually fair proposition. Our battery technology is probably 40-50 years from being really, really viable.
Why are people so impatient that they cannot wait that timeframe to allow the technology to mature while at the same time we invest the money being wasted on EV policy into shoring up the grid to support the eventual improvement in battery technology?
In 40-50 years, we may able to have our first set of fusion reactors online. It seems that there is a collective unrest with waiting.
Quote from: WookieOnRitalin on May 12, 2023, 01:26:23 PMPretty good video on explaining the challenges in batteries chemistries.
Thanks for the recommendation, I'll watch this tonight.