Comparing to LFP the advantages are not that big. It might be cheaper and scale better. Charging speed is now mostly limited by public charger speed and good enough. I expect sodium batteries to have a big impact in cars that cost 25k or less.
Not sure where this is the case. Here, the 250kw chargers are plentiful, but cars average closer to 120kw because of the charge curve. We're still battery limited most of the time.
In other words, most cars.
"Americans remain resistant to the lure of EVs, which are still unaffordable": https://arstechnica.com/cars/2022/11/only-1-in-3-americans-w...
However the price advantage is more than enough. After a short googling, it appears that I could buy right now a battery large enough to supply the energy for one day for my house (5 kWh), either as sodium-ion for $650 or as lithium-iron phosphate for $5000 (with very similar specifications for endurance and size).
The former I could buy at any time, for the latter I would have to save money for some months to be able to afford it. That is a large enough advantage.
$1000 per kWh was the first price that I have found for a 5 kWh LFP battery and I am lazy now to search for a cheaper one, so this is a real price, even if it is likely not the best price.
For a much larger battery, a quick search shows EUR 20000 for 50 kWh, i.e. EUR 400/kWh (though this price is older and now it might have increased). It is normal for the price per kWh to decrease at very large capacities.
Also, the fact that LFP were cheaper than this a decade ago is irrelevant, because googling about their price finds that "lithium prices have surged over 700% since the start of 2021, which has led to a big jump in battery pack prices" (written in May 2022).
However, Na-ion batteries for solar energy storage have certainly already hit the market, e.g.:
https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/SUNPOK-48V-5kwh-Sodiu...
EDIT: After an extra search, I have seen an offer for a LFP 5 kWh battery @ $2000, so it looks like the $400/kWh price is available for lower capacities too. Nevertheless, this price is less reliable than the higher prices seen initially, because it is only for some kind of pre-order with unknown delivery time.
https://www.currentconnected.com/product/sk48v100/
You can easily find other brands for less than $300/kWh, and plenty of review/teardowns on youtube.
Edit: adding "Typical capacity at 80% DOD @.5C Rate is over 7000 Cycles" so if you bring your battery to 7000 80% cycles at 0.5C you got 28000 kWh out of it, so 0.059 USD/kWh out of the battery (and you still have 4 kWh usable in the battery so many more cycles).
Therefore, the current price for Na-ion batteries is only 3 times less than LFP (the endurance and lifetime are claimed to be about the same for Na-ion and LFP).
Still, this price ratio of 3 remains a significant difference and it is very likely that in the future the price of Na-ion will decrease at a much higher rate than the cost of the mature lithium-based batteries, when more manufacturers will begin to make Na-ion batteries.
If they had a Tesla Megapack as a buffer for example the transformer wouldn’t be the bottleneck as the output is greater from the Megapack.