10.4 GWh of sodium ion capacity shold be installed by the end of 2023 (per Benchmark Materials). Benchmark forecasts a utilization rate of just 24%, representative of 2.5 GWh of production. It is mainly Tier 1 battery makers like CATL, BYD, Farasi.
In 2024, there is an additional 63 GWh of capacity set to be added. However, 67% of this is from newer battery companies who are ranked as Tier 2 or 3 sodium-ion cell producers. They are less reliable for hitting production and utilization targets.
The first generation sodium ion are a bit cheaper than iron LFP but the volumes will not be worldchanging. However, the second generation sodium ion could reach $40 per kWh. Iron LFP batteries could get to $50/kWh with really high volume and efficiency at the cell level. The future low price of sodium ion would make for insanely cheap fixed storage products like the Tesla Megapack and Powerwalls.
Sodium ion also do not have practical material limits. There is no shortage of salt or soda ash. The United States has about 90% of the world’s readily mined reserves of soda ash. Wyoming has 47 billion tons of mineable soda ash in the Green River basin. There would be hundreds of TWH of power storage from each billion tons of soda ash.
Sodium Ion batteries use much of the same battery equipment. The potential is that like iron LFP they can rapidly scale to hundreds of GWh/year and then terawatt hours per year. Benchmark is pessimistic about the speed of sodium ion scaling.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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Some people are complaining about range anxiety. Most people don’t do very long drives very often. Even if you need to take a rest after few hours and charge the car that is no big deal.
If the battery price is low enough and it lasts long without degradation that is great.
Not bad, it looks like, new, they’re already cheaper than the used Nissan Leaf batteries I use in my robotics hobby.