The other real tradeoff is that it doesn’t rely on rare earth materials in order to function. Sodium is incredibly abundant and can easily be filtered out of seawater for all the world’s needs for the next thousand years.
It’s also theoretically less toxic and less likely to explode, and even though for now it costs more than lithium, what with lithium having had 20-some odd years of development behind it, the price will come down because the raw materials to make it are abundant and cheap.
It’s a production scale thing. The lithium-based battery manufacturing has been scaling for nearly two decades, it’s why the batteries keep getting cheaper even though the increasing demand for the raw materials keeps increasing their cost.
The engineering needs to catch up to the research and development, then the production cost will drop.
you dont have to be cheap to compete with LFP, if other aspects of the battery surpass it, e.g degredation, charging speed are two major examples, just having the alternative is a major step. being cheaper is generally just a byproduct of the fact that the supply chain hasn’t started mass producing it. If anyone is expecting newer battery tech to go guns a blazing, then they for example still dont understand why processor chips are still on silicon and not on like carbon nanotubes or graphene for example.
theres a typical huge wall in order to make new tech cheaper than the widely used current tech, especially if its supply chain has been there for over a decade.
what?
The entire point is that this ‘almost’ competes with LFP but not as good,
But the trade off is it’s suppose to be cheaper.
The other real tradeoff is that it doesn’t rely on rare earth materials in order to function. Sodium is incredibly abundant and can easily be filtered out of seawater for all the world’s needs for the next thousand years.
It’s also theoretically less toxic and less likely to explode, and even though for now it costs more than lithium, what with lithium having had 20-some odd years of development behind it, the price will come down because the raw materials to make it are abundant and cheap.
it just ocurred to me. could this be done on desalination plants for drinkable water? how much sodium are we talking about here?
It’s a production scale thing. The lithium-based battery manufacturing has been scaling for nearly two decades, it’s why the batteries keep getting cheaper even though the increasing demand for the raw materials keeps increasing their cost.
The engineering needs to catch up to the research and development, then the production cost will drop.
you dont have to be cheap to compete with LFP, if other aspects of the battery surpass it, e.g degredation, charging speed are two major examples, just having the alternative is a major step. being cheaper is generally just a byproduct of the fact that the supply chain hasn’t started mass producing it. If anyone is expecting newer battery tech to go guns a blazing, then they for example still dont understand why processor chips are still on silicon and not on like carbon nanotubes or graphene for example.
theres a typical huge wall in order to make new tech cheaper than the widely used current tech, especially if its supply chain has been there for over a decade.