3 ms·

I've been following the developments around this chemistry since the time Tiamat announced their sodium-ion battery and it appears that in this case it's not al

• throwtheacctawy 4y ago
• adrian_b 4y ago
  Maybe CATL will not be able to deliver what they have promised, but that article is just a piece of garbage that does not prove anything. I could not read it on Bloomberg, but the same article seems to be also available at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/are-investors-betting-on-the-wrong-ev-batteries/2022/11/06/8e302db8-5e27-11ed-a131-e900e4a6336b_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/are-investors... The article begins with a photograph of "A CATL battery pack on display at the IAA Transportation show in Hanover, Germany, on Monday, Sept. 19, 2022". The article does not say whether the pictured battery pack is one with Na-ion or just some random battery pack that does not have any relationship with the article. If the battery pack displayed at Hanover had been a Na-ion, then it would have been weird for CATL to show it if they had discovered problems that would have prevented its production. Also, the article says that CATL have announced last month again that they will start the production in 2023. It would be weird for them to discover just now problems that have not been discovered earlier. After this introduction, the article says repeatedly that despite what CATL hoped, the Na-ion batteries are not good, but then the article fails to provide even a single logically-coherent sentence that says what exactly is not good about them. Until anyone else provides some real information about what might be wrong about the CATL Na-ion batteries, this Bloomberg "analysis" can be safely ignored. There is no doubt that the Na-ion batteries can work fine at energy/mass ratios somewhat lower than lithium-iron phosphate batteries. CATL claims that they have found some means to increase the energy/mass ratio to a value intermediate between that of LFP and that of lithium-nickel/cobalt batteries. It is possible that whatever they have done could affect negatively other battery parameters, but with the possible exception of the lifetime, such problems should have been identified much earlier and CATL should not have continued to say that everything is on track, so even as a rumor report that lacks any concrete information the Bloomberg "analysis" looks more like wishful thinking than like anything plausible. The few numbers given in the "analysis" are wrong. It is said that Na-ion would need an 8 times increase in energy density, which is a claim that would be valid only about the ancient lead-acid batteries. Na-ion needs only a 2 times ... 2.5 times increase in energy density to become competitive in transportation applications. There is some nonsense claim about Na-ion batteries "in certain formulations", which, even if it were true, would say nothing about the CATL batteries, because those do not use those "certain formulations", whichever those might be. I have rarely read any article so illogical as this one.
  • Tade0 4y ago
    I pay extra attention to such articles because even the worst smear piece has to hinge on something. The fact of the matter is that CATL hit some kind of yet unidentified roadblock and LFP made amazing progress in parallel and may sweep the market as a generally worse, but immediate solution. It will be still CATL manufacturing it, so they win regardless though. I'm especially cautious after almost a decade ago zinc-air was showing promise as a low-cost battery, but that never really went anywhere.
• hokkos 4y ago
  Another opinion on the difficulties of Na-ion here : https://www.linkedin.com/posts/alexandergirau_are-investors-betting-on-the-wrong-ev-batteries-activity-6996134524577341440-u6fz/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios https://www.linkedin.com/posts/alexandergirau_are-investors-...
  • manholio 4y ago
    This reads like pure hype from an obscure battery startup pushing their own exotic Sodium-Potassium solution, that sounds no furter then TRL3.