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Lithium-free sodium batteries exit the lab and enter US production

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Re: Lithium-free sodium batteries exit the lab and enter US production

#81

Post by _yb2s »

alemanek wrote: post #74
_yb2s wrote: post #67

I had an early EV with only 80 miles of range, and found it extremely useful for most in town travel and commuting. Now that EVs are pushing ~400 miles range at about 300Wh/kg, assuming sodium is about half that (from what I've seen), you'd still get a respectable 100-200 miles in a car. For me, and I imagine a lot of people, that would be totally acceptable if it means lower cost, and batteries that effectively last…

From the article it claims charge speed 10x that of lithium and 50,000 cycle lifetime. I don’t know about you but a EV that can go 150 miles and charge to 80% again in 2min would be super compelling to me. Solid commuter car but not too annoying on the rare roadtrip. But, I am guessing grid frequency regulation use cases are going to make these too expensive for a car for a long time.

I missed the 10x charge speed- that is a killer feature that more than makes up for the reduced range.

Re: Lithium-free sodium batteries exit the lab and enter US production

#82

Post by stevetodd »

jwagenet wrote: post #75
_yb2s wrote: post #67

I had an early EV with only 80 miles of range, and found it extremely useful for most in town travel and commuting. Now that EVs are pushing ~400 miles range at about 300Wh/kg, assuming sodium is about half that (from what I've seen), you'd still get a respectable 100-200 miles in a car. For me, and I imagine a lot of people, that would be totally acceptable if it means lower cost, and batteries that effectively last…

This falls in line with a plug in hybrid being an excellent alternative to evs for most people. 30-50 miles of driving around town for work an errands, with an ICE for the occasional longer trip. Almost all driving will be electric without the charge anxiety.

My hesitation with hybrids is that I keep all the associated maintenance costs of an ICE engine. Now I have two power trains and energy systems to maintain instead of just one.

Re: Lithium-free sodium batteries exit the lab and enter US production

#83

Post by _yb2s »

jwagenet wrote: post #75
_yb2s wrote: post #67

I had an early EV with only 80 miles of range, and found it extremely useful for most in town travel and commuting. Now that EVs are pushing ~400 miles range at about 300Wh/kg, assuming sodium is about half that (from what I've seen), you'd still get a respectable 100-200 miles in a car. For me, and I imagine a lot of people, that would be totally acceptable if it means lower cost, and batteries that effectively last…

This falls in line with a plug in hybrid being an excellent alternative to evs for most people. 30-50 miles of driving around town for work an errands, with an ICE for the occasional longer trip. Almost all driving will be electric without the charge anxiety.

Yeah, they seem like a nice solution. The good plug-in EVs are still too new and expensive for me, so I had an old ICE vehicle and an old EV. They were both actually the exact same car model in the same color even, the ICE and EV versions of it.

Re: Lithium-free sodium batteries exit the lab and enter US production

#84

Post by GaggiX »

jwagenet wrote: post #75
_yb2s wrote: post #67

I had an early EV with only 80 miles of range, and found it extremely useful for most in town travel and commuting. Now that EVs are pushing ~400 miles range at about 300Wh/kg, assuming sodium is about half that (from what I've seen), you'd still get a respectable 100-200 miles in a car. For me, and I imagine a lot of people, that would be totally acceptable if it means lower cost, and batteries that effectively last…

This falls in line with a plug in hybrid being an excellent alternative to evs for most people. 30-50 miles of driving around town for work an errands, with an ICE for the occasional longer trip. Almost all driving will be electric without the charge anxiety.

I believe that most people with a plug in hydrid actually forget to plug the car in, so the car is almost never in electric.

Re: Lithium-free sodium batteries exit the lab and enter US production

#85

Post by simplyluke »

GaggiX wrote: post #84
jwagenet wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This falls in line with a plug in hybrid being an excellent alternative to evs for most people. 30-50 miles of driving around town for work an errands, with an ICE for the occasional longer trip. Almost all driving will be electric without the charge anxiety.

I believe that most people with a plug in hydrid actually forget to plug the car in, so the car is almost never in electric.

That is... debatable. The study that showed that came out of Europe, where a huge percentage of cars purchased new are fleet vehicles, and not owned by individuals/families. Why would I plug a company car in when I pay my electric bill but have a corporate card for gas?

Re: Lithium-free sodium batteries exit the lab and enter US production

#86

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

AustinDev wrote: post #62
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lowering the power we use, is the only realistic goal. I wear an Apple Watch. On my wrist, is a small, Lithium-ion battery, that contains a great deal of power. That power is trickled out, over time. If it were to all release at once, I'd no longer have a left hand. Packing all that energy into smaller and smaller form factors, increases the risk; no matter what tech we use. Energy is energy. When it comes out quickl…

One little point I want to clarify is that if your Apple Watch battery did indeed short and none of the protections against shorts worked, you'd likely just have a burn on your wrist. 309mAH isn't all that much energy assuming a full charge. I once bridged a ~2,500mAH 18650 battery that was in my bag when my keys created a circuit between the anode and the cathode. The result was a small fire inside my bag that was q…

Well, shorting out is a fairly realistic scenario, as opposed to a flash-boom, but it is still a relatively slow release.

I was really talking about how much energy potential is stored in batteries. In batteries, the energy is generally stored as potential chemical reactions, so it isn't realistic to have a flash-boom.

Supercapacitors, on the other hand, may have more of a boom potential.

Re: Lithium-free sodium batteries exit the lab and enter US production

#87

Post by ZoomerCretin »

_yb2s wrote: post #67

I had an early EV with only 80 miles of range, and found it extremely useful for most in town travel and commuting. Now that EVs are pushing ~400 miles range at about 300Wh/kg, assuming sodium is about half that (from what I've seen), you'd still get a respectable 100-200 miles in a car. For me, and I imagine a lot of people, that would be totally acceptable if it means lower cost, and batteries that effectively last…

From the article, these are estimated at 70 Wh/kg. Pretty abysmal for EVs, but the trade-offs likely aren't too undesirable for home battery backups or utility-scale batteries.

Re: Lithium-free sodium batteries exit the lab and enter US production

#88

Post by sircastor »

_yb2s wrote: post #67

I had an early EV with only 80 miles of range, and found it extremely useful for most in town travel and commuting. Now that EVs are pushing ~400 miles range at about 300Wh/kg, assuming sodium is about half that (from what I've seen), you'd still get a respectable 100-200 miles in a car. For me, and I imagine a lot of people, that would be totally acceptable if it means lower cost, and batteries that effectively last…

I still drive a low ranged early EV (2012 Leaf) and it still works very well for me (we probably get about 35 miles of real range per charge.) I would be delighted if I could replace the battery with something like this.

I worry that I’ll never see a compatible replacement battery with the tech though.

Re: Lithium-free sodium batteries exit the lab and enter US production

#89

Post by gabrielhidasy »

MrDrMcCoy wrote: post #38
hackernewds wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why so cynical

I mean, look at what was done to lighting. There are some original Edison bulbs that still work, yet you'd be lucky to get a year out of a modern incandescent. Same thing happened to LED bulbs.

Want the experience of a lightbulb from 100 years ago right now? Buy a 220v lamp and use it in a 110v circuit. It will be much dimmer, a lot more orange/yellow, and last for decades.

Re: Lithium-free sodium batteries exit the lab and enter US production

#90

Post by fwungy »

bjornsing wrote: post #76
vegetablepotpie wrote: post #33

We’re undergoing a Cambrian explosion of battery chemistries at the moment. Other startups, such as From Energy is scaling up production of Iron Air batteries in West Virginia, which will be an order of magnitude cheaper than lithium ion and will provide grid scale power [1]. North Harbour Clean Energy Promised to build a manufacturing facility in Australia to build Vanadium Flow batteries, which have very high charg…

Interesting. Is there a public spreadsheet or similar summarizing the most important properties of these new battery types? It takes forever to just research one of them in enough depth to understand their basic properties, and I’d like to compare many.

DOE puts out comparison papers at times, but I haven't looked in a while.
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