This is a great entrepreneurial story too. Colin began this company out of his PhD research at Stanford a decade ago. A long, steady grind and finally out to production. Kudos to him and his team - a very rare accomplishment, and inspiring to see.
Lithium-free sodium batteries exit the lab and enter US production
161–170 of 396 posts
Re: Lithium-free sodium batteries exit the lab and enter US production
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Two minutes is about the amount of time it takes to fill my ICE car, so yeah, that'd be nice.
Yeah but do you have a gas station at home so it's "always full"? That's really nice ;)
Re: Lithium-free sodium batteries exit the lab and enter US production
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
You do, but at least repair costs should be low because typically you won't put very many miles on that engine. Suppose 90% of your miles are electric. After you've put 250K miles (400K km) on the car, you've only got 25K miles (40K km) on the engine. Rarely do you have significant engine trouble at that mileage. Also, the engine design can probably be simplified if it's just acting as a generator. You don't need a t…
I wish they'd just sell/rent little trailers with a charging engine on them you could take on long trips.
Re: Lithium-free sodium batteries exit the lab and enter US production
#164Great video about sodium batteries (including solid state) https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yRAJSH_raW8
Re: Lithium-free sodium batteries exit the lab and enter US production
#165I 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…
100 mile range battery - that’s about 30kwh or a whopping $1500 worth of battery cells. ICE won’t be able to compete to this.
Re: Lithium-free sodium batteries exit the lab and enter US production
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Mostly from Australia and Chile" seems like the opposite of baggage, that sounds like about the best you could hope for in a global commodity, so many of which come from unstable regions, conflict regions, or outright adversaries. Yes, I know that China does most of the refining/assembly, but that has little to do with the chemistry. "Building new Na-ion capacity outside China" is probably even harder than "building…
Unless you are from those places. Ie few years ago we visited Salar de Uyuni, biggest salt flat in the world, properly amazing place. And one of the biggest deposits of lithium. Any form of mining (and you know in Bolivia it won't be eco-friendly unless miracle happens) will destroy at least some aspects of it. And there are massive plans. Now sure not that many species of animals/plants will be affected compared to…
No animals/plants live on arid salt-flats. They pile the lithium salts and let it dry before carting it away. What changes if they also use the sodium?
Re: Lithium-free sodium batteries exit the lab and enter US production
#167do these batteries burn in a mostly uncontrollable way like lithium ion?
No, they are not flammable. Here's a datasheet for one of their products (from the Wayback Machine, because this link is now dead on their website -- maybe resource moved and not indexed yet):
https://web.archive.org/web/20230402215314/https://natron.en...
Highlighted points include:
Nonflammable Chemistry & Construction
UL9540A ‘Champion’ rated nonflammable with no thermal runaway under any condition
Safe and Fault Tolerant: No Fire or Explosion During
- Heating
- Overcharge
- Short Circuit
- Nail Penetration
Re: Lithium-free sodium batteries exit the lab and enter US production
#168I 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.
From what I can gather, 160 Wh/kg is currently possible with sodium-ion, maybe even a bit more in the future.
Re: Lithium-free sodium batteries exit the lab and enter US production
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
The main blocker with ev charge speeds now is the charging station capacity though, no? Having said that - if we can get cheap and safe batteries installed within the charging stations, this would make for an awesome improvement
Most charging stations already have lithium batteries installed as a buffer for the grid, and those batteries tend to be safer designs since there's no weight/density penalty for fixed infrastructure. Sodium batteries would just make charging stations cheaper to build.
A lot of people tend to think of the ideal charging station as a gas station, where lots of cars go to quickly add range. But gas stations have large capacity because of their disadvantages. Ideally if they were safe, cheap, and compact, wouldn't you want gas stations everywhere? I'd love to have a gas station at home, in every parking garage, and at every scenic viewpoint on the road. The reason we don't have that is because gas stations emit toxic vapors and have giant tanks of combustible liquid. They need tanker trucks to regularly refuel them. Charging stations don't have those problems, which is why you can make them much smaller and put them almost anywhere. You don't even need a grid connection. Solar + batteries works in places where land is cheap.
Re: Lithium-free sodium batteries exit the lab and enter US production
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
Compelling to me also, as a person who has shied away from EVs because of charging time annoyances. I'd gladly trade the mileage for charging speed every time. Getting excited for what's to come.
Is charge time important because you can't install a L2 charger at home / apartment to keep it "always charged" or because your usage pattern is too heavy duty for a 30 minute break every 200-300mi? If it's just the former, the slow steady march of EV mindshare might solve your needs before the "L4" super-fast-charging battery. I am starting to see L2 chargers pop up in apartment parking lots, for example. IMO, "alwa…
The latter, actually. I'd much prefer to stop for five minutes every 2 hours than 30 minutes every 4 hours.