CATL's Sodium-Ion Battery

Yes. My question is always "show me the shop where I can buy it". Never an answer ;)

CATL is the world’s biggest EV battery manufacturer, and they’re planning to mass produce these batteries in the next few months. This isn’t your run of the mill university research press release.

I’m more worried that $5k savings per EV will translate to $500 per EV for the end customer. More than anything, I welcome the switch away from lithium for both economic and environmental reasons.

I think one underlying current is market prediction - i.e. if CATL's solution is more widely available as a supplier to the larger market, will they eventually "TSMC" Tesla's battery tech?

It would have been nice if you did read the article before commenting. You might be right about HN and battery articles, most of the time, but in this case it's quite a credible technology and manufacturer.

While it's not actually in customers hands, there are two things that make this story different from most:

* This isn't a research lab announcing, or even an R&D department. This is a large, respected battery manufacturer announcing an imminent mainstream product

* The date for being in customers hands is 2023. This isn't the usual "we just need to work out how to manufacture it and then maybe in 10 years". Next year means "we have this production process worked out and are ramping up as we speak".

This month, on "cynical people of hacker news".

This would be one you can see, buy (from the largest battery manufacturer in the world), and generally be all over of pretty soon. Catl took one of the battery chemistries that you've been reading about and are casually dismissing and made it work.

It's a bit of a meme on HN that things aren't real or worth talking about until it solves all your imaginary problems is being mass produced, etc. Of course this is a website run by Y combinator with a diverse audience of technologists, startup people, investors, and generally people interested in learning about new things that might be disruptive, revolutionary, etc. Yes, there are a lot of new battery chemistries. And quite a few of them look like they might eventually make a big difference with some further investments. And most of those are highly of interest to both VCs that are investing in these things and, people involved with other startups in the same space, or people like me that like the idea that there are people out there working on solving some of the harder challenges in this world.

Context is important

> CATL recently stated that they aim to get their sodium-ion battery into production in 2023 and are already talking with manufacturers about using it in their cars. Ultimately, it seems like CATL is ready to take centre stage in the EV battery race and cause a revolution.

This is a major manufacturer claiming plans to begin production in the next year and to already be in sales talks.

This is pretty far along the “How real is it” spectrum and a major bump for sodium chemistry batteries which last i knew were more in the “lab stage with major drawbacks”

Maybe CATL will not be able to deliver what they have promised, but that article is just a piece of garbage that does not prove anything.

I could not read it on Bloomberg, but the same article seems to be also available at:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/are-investors...

The article begins with a photograph of "A CATL battery pack on display at the IAA Transportation show in Hanover, Germany, on Monday, Sept. 19, 2022".

The article does not say whether the pictured battery pack is one with Na-ion or just some random battery pack that does not have any relationship with the article.

If the battery pack displayed at Hanover had been a Na-ion, then it would have been weird for CATL to show it if they had discovered problems that would have prevented its production. Also, the article says that CATL have announced last month again that they will start the production in 2023. It would be weird for them to discover just now problems that have not been discovered earlier.

After this introduction, the article says repeatedly that despite what CATL hoped, the Na-ion batteries are not good, but then the article fails to provide even a single logically-coherent sentence that says what exactly is not good about them.

Until anyone else provides some real information about what might be wrong about the CATL Na-ion batteries, this Bloomberg "analysis" can be safely ignored.

There is no doubt that the Na-ion batteries can work fine at energy/mass ratios somewhat lower than lithium-iron phosphate batteries.

CATL claims that they have found some means to increase the energy/mass ratio to a value intermediate between that of LFP and that of lithium-nickel/cobalt batteries.

It is possible that whatever they have done could affect negatively other battery parameters, but with the possible exception of the lifetime, such problems should have been identified much earlier and CATL should not have continued to say that everything is on track, so even as a rumor report that lacks any concrete information the Bloomberg "analysis" looks more like wishful thinking than like anything plausible.

The few numbers given in the "analysis" are wrong. It is said that Na-ion would need an 8 times increase in energy density, which is a claim that would be valid only about the ancient lead-acid batteries. Na-ion needs only a 2 times ... 2.5 times increase in energy density to become competitive in transportation applications.

There is some nonsense claim about Na-ion batteries "in certain formulations", which, even if it were true, would say nothing about the CATL batteries, because those do not use those "certain formulations", whichever those might be.

I have rarely read any article so illogical as this one.

Another opinion on the difficulties of Na-ion here :

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/alexandergirau_are-investors-...

Presumably you say that due to energy density. However it discusses that in the article. You’re invited to read.

Given that sodium ion is claimed to

- charge twice as fast as lithium ion

- have double the number of charge cycles

- cost substantially less

- be substantially safer

- and more environmentally friendly

I think it would be the clear preference for all but the highest performance vehicles.

Note that Tesla is also trying to reduce cost in moving to 4680 cells [1]:

> the main reason Tesla is using 4680 batteries at the moment is to cut manufacturing costs, rather than any of the other pie-in-the-sky advantages announced on Battery Day a few years back.

> A Model Y's 4680 pack, for instance, is US$3,600 cheaper to manufacture than one with 2170 cells, but even then Tesla is only halfway through with the cost reduction potential of the new technology. It has yet to master and scale the dry-coating cathode method which would bring the pack's cost down US$5,500 compared to the 2170 battery.

[1] https://www.notebookcheck.net/Tesla-4680-vs-2170-battery-cel....

China is an immense market for lower-cost EVs. They also do not have as far to drive as most Americans. This battery tech could be less suitable for the US than China and still have an enormous market.

Building (house, commercial building, factory) and grid four- to eight-hour storage (stationary storage) is potentially a much bigger market than vehicle storage, espcially as processes that now use carbon-intensive fuels are replaced.

Little is known about CATL's secret sauce. But several other groups have been working on other Na-ion chemistries, mostly for stationary storage which has bigger market potential if the price is right.

Faradion is working on Na-ion for India's vehicle market.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium-ion_battery#Commerciali...

IANAE, but from my very brief topic search last month (~50 hours) the risks are competitive, that some other chemistry turns out to be "better" for a major application or that some other company does it better than you.

There is always the possibility that someone figures out how to make cheap, safe, reliable, durable, high-current, temperature-tolerant and abuse-tolerant X-air (aluminum-air, lithium-air, or some other common metal or anion -air) batteries. The holy grail of max energy density, volumetric and gravimetric.

There are many niches in storage, though, especially in stationary uses. Lifetime cost (10 to 50 years) will dominate for some, sticker (label) price for others.

CATL as the world's largest manufacturer of batteries is covering the entire battery market and different parts of the market have different requirements. It's less about risk and more about having products with different cost and features. They are diversifying their products and opening up new segments of the market.

Sodium ion batteries are interesting because they don't depend on a lot of expensive materials like Lithium and (presumably) don't require a lot of dirty and energy intensive processing. In terms of energy density they are comparable to some of the outdated lithium batteries from a few years ago (i.e. not that impressive but still capable). But in terms of cost, it probably is a massive improvement. And this looks like it should do well in cheap cars as a good enough & cheap enough battery. And of course there is a lot of demand for batteries now beyond cars or transport where energy density simply is not that relevant.

Sodium-ion batteries with lower energy/mass ratio, but with high endurance and low cost, which are suitable for stationary applications, like storage for solar energy, are already available commercially.

Googling finds on-line offers for 48-V, 2.5 to 10 kWh batteries at an energy/mass ratio of 89 Wh/kg (a similar battery with lithium-iron phosphate has 133 Wh/kg), i.e. a little less than half of what CATL is claimed to have achieved.

It remains to be seen whether the claims about CATL are true, but the difference between what is claimed and what is already available is not so large as to make the claims incredible.

For stationary applications, the sodium-ion batteries already seem a good choice, due to the much lower price than even the lithium-iron phosphate batteries, which have very similar specifications but seem to be 7 to 8 times more expensive.

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.

Right now any framing that somehow involves sticking it to Elon Musk guarantees clicks.

Can you provide a link to corroborate this is the typical [sad] battery vaporware?

I'm searching but haven't yet found the goods.

true but if youre going to compare anything to a musk product in R&D then it should probably be cold fusion anti grav cars.

Maybe we could even convert existing mcdonalds locations into battery-swap and electric vehicle charging stations

Take the salt, heat it, run current through it. Sodium vapor comes out.

Not exactly "easy", but self-contained. From an environmental point of view sodium is absolutely brilliant compared to lithium. Everyone with access to sea water can produce almost 400 g of sodium from 1kg of common table salt. No lithium mining needed.

More info: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downs_cell

NaCl is not an applicable source material for these batteries. Na₂CO₃ is going to be the it, for better or for worse.

Any references towards US policy against CATL? Most battery producers build plants in the local region anyways.

Surely you don’t think China has been a fair partner in technology and business? That perhaps the Chinese state has conducted systematic espionage to favor its local industry development, mandated technology transfer for market access, established unfair trade policies to favor local business development, and suppressed the success of foreign investment that was purchased at the cost of aforementioned technology transfer?

Chemistry will not be determinant regarding which battery technology will prevail. Cost will be primary and endurance will be next. Tesla's 4680 (yes, it's a can, not a chemistry) automated manufacturing technology will be hard to beat in both cost and endurance. And it's just at the beginning of the learning curve of the manufacturing tech. Competitors will have to be prepared to shell out plenty of cash to keep up. Hard not to notice that even Panasonic would not commit to 4680 manufacturing at scale until they could confirm that Tesla's dry anode tech was viable.

You can bad CATL and Tesla can continue to serve remaining 90% of EV market