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CATL's Sodium-Ion Battery

medium.com

1–10 of 96 posts

Re: CATL's Sodium-Ion Battery

#3
Paywalled, but CATL already make 1/3rd of all EV batteries, including some to Tesla. Tesla's main supplier, Panasonic only supplies 9% of global demand so the framing of this as a threat to Tesla is weird.

The US willingly gave up any chance to lead on this tech (and several related areas) to China, to slightly prolong their hydrocarbon industry. An obviously bad decision for multiple reasons.

Re: CATL's Sodium-Ion Battery

#8

Paywalled, but CATL already make 1/3rd of all EV batteries, including some to Tesla. Tesla's main supplier, Panasonic only supplies 9% of global demand so the framing of this as a threat to Tesla is weird. The US willingly gave up any chance to lead on this tech (and several related areas) to China, to slightly prolong their hydrocarbon industry. An obviously bad decision for multiple reasons.

Another reason is relatively lax environmental laws for rare earth production and electronics manufacturing. Interestingly, to your point, fracking and other hydrocarbon production techniques, are at least as bad if not worse but seem to get a relatively free pass.

That said the advent of a sodium ion technology that’s practical at scale opens the door for competition by decoupling rare earth production from battery costs. Local rare earth saves on tariffs and transportation costs. Sodium earth makes it a raw technological affair and the west is still leading in technological innovation. Manufacturing is already globally spread out for battery production, so raw cost of labor must not be a primary component of cost.

Re: CATL's Sodium-Ion Battery

#9
There is no way that CATL is going to escape the US policy of suppressing China's technological development. Batteries are going to follow SC's - very likely next in line - and Tesla's reliance on CATL batteries is the weak point upon which Musk's empire will fall. Destroying CATL will probably set back EV adoption by some years, replacement suppliers will surely be built if industrial policy continues to be applied
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