JAC Motors, a Volkswagen-backed Chinese automaker, unveiled the first mass-produced EV with a sodium-ion battery through its new Yiwei brand. Although sodium-ion battery tech has a lower density than lithium-ion, its lower costs, simpler and more abundant supplies and superior cold-weather performance could help accelerate mass EV adoption.
Interesting! So it would make sense to have tons of sodium batteries for all purposes for which one doesn’t need maybe higher capacity or performance as I understand lithium batteries offer
Instead of thinking “capacity” by itself, thing of “capacity for the given space” or rather “density”. So Sodium batteries can be equal capacity as Lithium, but the equivalent capacity Sodium battery will be significantly larger. In applications like storing overproduced wind or solar electricity for use later, we don’t care how big the battery is. However, it a moving vehicle where every square centimeter and every kg changes the performance of the car, those density differences can have a real impact.