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World's largest sodium-ion battery goes into operation - Energy Storage
(www.ess-news.com)
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this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2024
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The draw-back with sodium batteries needs to be known, because they won't replace lithium anytime soon.
The density is lower, which is a great problem in EVs.
Not trying to be negative, but for an EV, or anything handheld, you get more weight for less power. Which is essential in a car, that uses more power the heavier it is.
What sodium IS the best at, are use cases where weight and size doesn't matter. Like with battery farms.
In this case they are much better than lithium.
Sodium could easily replace lithium in EV applications if people would acknowledge that only 2% of trips are more than 50 miles. Though it's probably moreso the auto industry's fault that people have this assumption they need to prepare for a three hundred mile journey on a moments notice.
If manufacturers were putting out cars that had four figure price tags with double digit ranges, they would become the best selling vehicles within a decade and no one would care if it was sodium, lithium, or sawdust. Of course, there is less profit to be made from smaller vehicles and so the corporations won't bother.
EV owner here. 50 miles is not practical, beacuse then I need another for the other 2% of trips that are longer than that. This also ignores detours or traffic jams, when google will try to reroute me over a longer, but faster route. Plus, the "50 miles" readout you get is always just an estimate and the real range depends on temperature, driving speed, start-stops and how much elevation you need to cover. Some 30km trips here cost me 50+ EV km because its all uphill in one direction. I usually add 30km to my trip as required charge, because when the battery reaches 25km the car starts to complain with a nervously blinking battery readout and a "Charge now!" message on the dashboard.
"But then you just charge during the trip!" - Well this only work if i go somewhere where i know where to find RELIABLE chargers. I am well aware that there are good apps that show me charging locations, but getting a charging spot I can actually use is a different story:
Not saying EVs are bad, but the charging infrastructure still needs some work to be reliable and accessible. Petrol stations always have some large, obnoxious signs on the side of the road that you cant miss; Charging stations are sometimes just a tiny grey box on a wall and a 5-space parking lot, or behind a building and you never notice it when driving by.
A lot of households, like my own, have multiple cars. We have a commuter (50 miles round trip) and a family car. We use the commuter for most trips around town (only commutes 2x/week), and the family car for longer road trips.
I don't need a car that can do both, I just need to replace the commuter since that's where the vast majority of our driving is.
Don't try to solve the hard problem of putting charging stations in the middle of nowhere, solve the easy problem of replacing that second car. For that, sodium-ion is more than sufficient. Focus infrastructure improvements on apartment complexes, workplaces, and shopping centers so people who don't have a garage can charge.
I wrote elsewhere about the infrastructure problem, but I'll sum up a couple things. There's around 200,000 gas stations in the United States. If there were an equivalent number of chargers around, having a small battery would be fine. Eventually this will be the case, but you highlight an important factor: closed ecosystems. All these chargers should work for any make of EV car.
As it stands with now, the need for a subscription or specific car or unique payment method is ludicrous. All these chargers should be required to have card readers the same way you can pay at the pump in a gas station. Beyond this, they'd all need to adopt the same charging method so people don't need a bunch of adapters in their trunk.
That said, there could be regulations established to require newly built housing, apartment buildings included, to have electric vehicle charging infrastructure - and more than just a few plugs. Grants could be made available for retrofitting existing buildings. If these things came to fruition, we wouldn't need two hundred thousand charging stations all over the place. It's not out of the question to install an overnight charging spot for every person that has an electric car - it just costs money.
Basically every argument I've seen against low range electric cars is founded in a charging infrastructure problem. Going to a bigger battery in a larger vehicle has significant and more costly ramifications on other infrastructure. It's better to aim for smaller, lighter vehicles with infrastructure in mind.
2015 Leaf owner here. I will agree with everything you said! If you know you know...and you my friend are spot phucking on