Long-time offgridder here. Would love to have a reasonable alternative to lead-acid or lithium. Opted for lead-acid again on the last battery swap around 5 years ago. Squeezed about 12 years out of the last set -though they were pretty degraded by that time. This bank is depreciating faster, probably because of increased use.
Lead acid batteries seem to be less and less reliable lately. The warranties are shorter and shorter as well, which is the best supporting evidence I have beyond needing batteries more often for the 4-5 vehicles I maintain.
For real. It will take up a lot more space than lithium, but if it lasts way longer and should end up being cheaper, it would definitely be the winning choice. Solar array on the roof and a huge outdoor battery in a shed against the house and no more electric bill, ever.
Make firefighter's jobs a lot easier. Hell you don't even need a firetruck to tell the people outside "Yeah, it's fucked, nobody's coming out of there"
The shitty thing right now is grid connection is required by pretty much any building code, and the utilities are getting wise to solar. They're moving a lot of the fees from power use to connection and line maintenance. My family was looking at solar, but since 2/3 of their power bill is just to be connected to the grid it wouldn't save enough to make economic sense.
And commuter cars probably. I'd love something I can drive to work and back, and then later upcycle into home energy storage.
CATL showed a 160 Wh/kg sodium-ion battery in 2021 and has plans to increase that density over 200 Wh/kg to better meet the needs of electric vehicles.
Hopefully that happens in a reasonable timeframe. I don't need high range, I just need cheap to repair or long life for a commuter. Maybe we'll get something similar for buses and light rail first before getting it for regular cars.
Yes, absolutely. For a regular daily commute to a job that allows you to afford 2 vehicles, having one of the two with a shorter range with more charge cycles makes a lot of sense.
Yup. I'm married with kids, so we need two cars regardless. The commuter just needs to reliably go ~50 miles between charges even during the winter, while the family car needs to fit my wife and kids and go at least 400 miles between charges (we like road trips).
Unfortunately, I haven't found the right fit since EVs are either too expensive, don't have enough winter range (e.g. old Leafs), or have too many safety advisories (e.g. batteries catching fire don't mesh with garage storage). Likewise for family cars. Most current EVs are in the awkward middle: too much range for a commute, and not enough for a road trip.
But if there was an economy car with ~150 miles range and inexpensive batteries, I'd probably buy it.
Yup, especially since my workplace has been talking about installing chargers. I don't know when that'll happen, but I'm willing to gamble if I won't need them for a couple years (I might move to another company by then anyway).
they can easily reignite, and traditional firefighting methods don't work
they can happen with a simple puncture, or during charging
there's pretty much no warning sign
Whereas with ICE vehicles:
generally caused by poor maintenance
overheating (major cause) has warning sensors and can generally be avoided
are fairly easy for fire departments to deal with
I was considering getting a Chevy Bolt, but the company's response to charging issues (i.e. don't charge in your garage) killed my enthusiasm for it. Pretty much everything else either costs too much or doesn't have enough range. I'd really rather not spend much more than $20k on a car, but the used market has been bonkers.
I think we still need more time/data to get the whole picture. EVs are still in their early stages.
It would be interesting to look at fire rates for vehicles at rest. These types of fires have the potential to become quite serious, as they are often not immediately noticed, especially if the vehicle is parked in a garage or remote area. This additional time allows the fire to spread and intensify.
Since EV fires are typically more intense than ICE vehicles, we should expect EV fires to cause more damage to the surroundings and to spread faster. Though, this danger could be offset if EVs have a lower probability of self ignition.
We should also look at fires while refueling/charging. Lithium cells are most dangerous when charging and discharging. While an overfilled gas tank is easy to spot and may catch fire, a continually overcharged battery is invisible and will catch fire. Also, because of the long charge time of batteries, many EV owners leave the vehicle unattended while charging and would not immediately notice a fire if one were to occur. In addition, EVs are often charged at home, in close proximity to residences and other vehicles, and often within garages. These residential locations do not have the same fire safety requirements and suppression systems as gas stations, so a vehicle fire at home is already much more dangerous and has the potential to severely damage your home.
We have had a century to figure out ICE, but it's still very early days for EVs, so only time will tell.
Of course this could all be addressed by designing robust systems that implement strong redundancy, safety checks, and sufficient regulation, but that increases complexity and costs money.
The Volt was really good for this - 50 miles electric and 430 miles gas on a 7 gallon tank.
Unfortunately, PHEVs fell out of fashion in 2018 and are only just coming back into style. I think the Prius is the only comparable car on the market that manages this. The Kia Niro is also looking reasonably good with a 34 mile EV range.
But if there was an economy car with ~150 miles range and inexpensive batteries, I’d probably buy it.
Both are in the $30-$40k range new. You can find a 2017 Chevy Volt for $16k (and I seriously can't recommend it enough).
I have a non-plugin Prius, and it works really well as a commuter. I got it for $10k like 10 years ago, and it has needed very little maintenance and still gets 45-ish MPG (highway speeds here are 70mph, and I usually go a few mph over).
Ideally, I'd go pure electric for the next one so I'd never need to go to the gas station again. A PHEV means I still need to use some gas since I highly doubt I'd get 50 miles range on our high speed highways, especially if the car is older.
But yeah, seeing the prices going down is good news. The EV discount for used EVs is doing a lot of work.
Yup. If it applied to private sales, I'd definitely get one. I just really hate dealing with dealers, so each of my last three cars have been from private parties. I tried dealers each time, and left with a bad impression.
Most of the EVs in local classifieds are from dealers, probably because of the tax credit.
What's hard now is finding a private sale from the vehicles actual owner. Thanks to Facebook and lazy half assed pieces of crap, almost every cheap used car listed on Facebook marketplace is one being flipped instead of one being sold by a long term owner.
Fortunately, my area has our own local classifieds that are used by a lot of locals, and owners very frequently sell their cars there. The problem is that, since the credits only apply to dealerships, they end up being about the same price or maybe more expensive than the dealers, which is bonkers.
So even if you find someone who is honest and the original owner, it'll probably be more expensive through them because the dealers get a tax cut (which is supposed to go to you...).
Probably would have if we didn't pull out all the stops to subsidize it all to hell and back. 40 years ago was a great time for increasing fuel efficiency and smaller, lighter cars specifically because of gas shortages, and when that got a temporary reprieve we just acted like it could never happen again
I remember NiCad batteries still being used in power wheels toys as a kid. For all I know they may still be, but the battery advancements have been particularly amazing.
Sodium batteries are in development for over 30 years. We were pioneering this kind of research almost 40 years ago and that's how much time, effort and financial investment this stuff takes. It will be 10 more years to get them everywhere. Technology is not as fast as you think.
Sodium batteries are in development for over 30 years.
Closer to a century. But the investment in the last decade has risen with the price of fossil fuel as well as the sharp fall in short-term available renewable electricity. International investment - particularly in states like China, India, and Germany - have spiked considerably during this time as well. That's why we're seeing so many productive discoveries outside the US.
It will be 10 more years to get them everywhere.
HiNA Battery Technology Company began producing EV-ready sodium batteries last year.
TÜV Rheinland approved Pylontech to begin mass producing bulk energy storage systems in March of 2023.
Rollout is occurring at the speed of domestic investment. And while US companies continue to drag their heels, countries with higher electricity demand and fewer fossil fuel subsidies are not waiting around.
I need long range and I need it at -30F. A round trip to the grocery store or to see a doctor is 100 miles and can be as much as 300 miles. I can't justify an EV until I can get that kind of range at an affordable price. $40,000US+ ain't really affordable for most people.
I almost bought a Chevy Bolt, but between not being able to actually find one to see and touch, and the almost good enough range, I just didn't feel comfortable with such a large purchase.
I think your use case is pretty niche, but 100 miles in winter (even if ridiculously cold) isn't that unreasonable. For me, that means a round trip to the airport, and that can absolutely happen in winter (e.g. family visiting for Christmas or something).
And yeah, I'm not paying $40k for a car, especially at these loan rates. I spend a bit more than $1k on gas, so if an ICE is $25k and electricity is completely free (it's not), it would take 10 years to be more economical. It's even worse that EV batteries and most parts of the electrical system just aren't repairable by your average mechanic, and battery replacements costs like $10-20k, which is about what I'm looking to pay for an entire car anyway.
I'm definitely interested, and I'll buy if the price is right. Chevy Bolt and Nissan Leaf are about right, but they've had battery issues in the past, but I'm seriously considering them, just looking for the right deal.
I'm in northern Minnesota. There is a fairly large low population area across the north central and northwestern part of that state. Not many people live here. And yes, the use case is pretty niche compared to anyone living in a more urban area. But while there aren't many of us up here, we do exist.
Financial constraints are the biggest issue with the adoption of EVs for most people. It is still cheaper for many to own an ICE than invest in an EV. The pay back is painfully slow. Still, if it hadn't been for the battery problems of the Bolt, I probably would have bought one. It would have been just doable for my needs as a second vehicle.
I have looked into hybrids also. The problem there is since I live in a very rural area, the long distances I travel means I drive at highway speeds for almost all of the trip. The ICE motor would run the whole trip anyway. Paying for a battery that is seldom used and dragging the extra weight around makes no sense.And it would be difficult to something repaired if it needed it.
Howdy Neighbor, you could always move a little further north. We've got lots of people driving EVs up here in Winnipeg! I'm kidding, but there is at least some charging infrastructure coming rurally here in Manitoba, and you are starting to see a lot of commuters using them for 100+ km (one-way) commutes. That being said, we have similar issues if you need to drive long distances between rural centers, but the government subsidies to help install L2 chargers seem to be making a difference as more and more municipalities are installing at least one charger somewhere. I can understand how people are still hesitant about winter, with -20C (-5f) to -30C(-30f) being not uncommon (for now...).
Hi! Neighbor! I am a lot closer to Winnipeg than the Twin Cities.
There are government programs to install chargers here also. The problem is, there is no money to fix those chargers when they stop working. My Daughter, who is a research engineer in the fields of public charging for EVs and HVAC systems, will tell you that she can get all kinds of money to install them, but there is no money to actually keep them working. And it's expensive to repair them. So it's nearly useless at this point in time to install them only to have them break and not get repaired. She is currently doing a 10 year study of a string of 60 chargers across the northern part of the state from Red Lake to Brainard to the Twin Cities.
Awesome! Isn't that always the way. People, agencies and governments love to put their name on new and shiny projects, but never want to fund labor or upkeep. I work for a non-profit and a big part of my job is begging for money to help us maintain the amazing infrastructure we have, but get very little support to upkeep.
I've spent a lot of time visiting Roseau and Warroad in my life, so it's always nice to meet an American neighbor in the wilds of the internet. Manitoba is actually a cool place to visit, and your dollar goes a lot further. Come up to Winnipeg for a weekend and you'd be surprised how much more there is to do now than even a decade a go. It's food and music scene is awesome.
I haven't been to Winnipeg in a long time, since before COVID. But I do get to Fort Francis when I go to the 'Falls. I miss the days when we could just pass the border without the hassle it's become today. I used to have family up in Roseau years ago. Might still be some shirttail outlaws up there.
My Daughter works for a non-profit too. She does research on not only public charging for vehicles, but also HVAC systems for homes across the US. I have also had to swim in the ocean of paperwork of state and federal grants. Few survive the experience for long. May God 'ha mercy on your soul!
For hybrids, I drive a Prius and mostly on the highway (70mph speed limit here) and I generally get 40-45mpg. I haven't had anything to wrong with the hybrid side, and it's not a plug-in hybrid. Prices are kinda high for them right now, but I got mine for $10k used about 10 years/90k miles ago (had 60k miles when I got it).
That said, I'm in Utah where winter temps rarely go below 10F, so I have no insight into really could winters.
But yeah, EVs really need to come down in price to make sense for me.
Where do you live that it's often -30? And if you need to drive 300mi to a doctor's for a medical emergency at that one time if year, do you have someone else you could ask or only drive there and worrying about charging later?
Northern Minnesota often sees those temperatures. And if it's a real medical emergency, you could well be dead by the time anyone can get to you - IF you have cell service to make a call. If they do make it to you, you will probably be airlifted by helicopter. Making a a 100+ mile trip, would be just for a clinic visit or even to pick up a prescription, which I did last Saturday for my Wife.
100+ miles is fine for most any EV. My bolt during the winter was still able to get 200mi+ at 70mph in sub zero F weather. With a home charger it's fine. It's road trips that would push further. I've found charging adds maybe 25% time to long trips. But that doesn't seem to be the use case you're referring to.
For sure. They would likely use a lower capacity battery due to these being much less energy dense, though. Hybrids have been using bigger batteries and only using around a 30% zone of charge state in order to greatly prolong battery degradation. I'd imagine auto makers would try to keep the batteries around the same size, but start using more like a 60 or 70% zone, though. So they'll take advantage of that higher cycle life.
You won't get an automaker to care about making a battery that lasts much beyond 10 years.
If ridership is low, you can’t run train often. And if you can’t run it often, people will not use it. It just does not work. This one has chance to work, since essentially you can run it on demand, like Uber.
No, these pods on existing rails are potentially a TON cheaper. Even if you don't count the cost of maintaining the road (which is significantly more than maintaining rail tracks), the need for paying a driver makes most small shuttle bus services prohibitively expensive.
In this case the rails are already there but unused.
That is also several strike against this. Those rails exist but they are all in really bad shape as they were nearly universally used without maintenance until it was no longer feasible. They are also generally in bad areas where there isn't much need for more transport - we already have roads in good shape (to run a bus on). The only thing this has over a bus is you can run them fully automated - which isn't enough IMO.
I think part of what makes tracks unusable for regular trains is when the rails become too misaligned. Of course that isn't an issue for a vehicle that only requires one rail. I kind of like this idea.
The tracks are also already there, and gyroscope stabilized monorail is a 100+ year old technology, not much new to develop about it other than using modern battery technology and some basic self-driving features for it.
Here's an amazing business plan: take the old designs for a railbus. Remove chassis, design a new chassis, but make it all futuristic. Show it to the investors. They'll say "but I want a pod!" And then you say "But it is a pod. A megapod, even!" And they'll squint and go "oh I see. Let's make 1000 of them."
(And actually this is exactly what people have done in the past. Cool futuristic exterior hiding what's basically just a diesel bus with train wheels.)
Their entire goal is to commercialize it.
Its not about efficiently moving large numbers of people. That makes too much sense for this endeavor since you need a set/rigid schedule and predictable travel patterns.
These abominations, are for the convenience of the individual, in the most poorly thought out way. Rather than waiting for the 3PM, they want to advetise you can show up at 2:51 and get on the next available pod and embark, and charge a premium for no waiting and probably try to jazz up the idea that you don't have to worry about other riders ruining your trip or being a distraction.
It entirely ignores the basic engineering problem of more moving parts means more chances of failure per trip and a single pod going down at best causes the entire line to shut down and at worst a catastrophic pile up as following pods fail to slow or stop and ram into the broken down pod.
Regular trains have conductors who can contact the control station or manually slow the train if an obstruction is on the track and some trains even have engineers on the train or on call who can report to a troubled train in short order to deal with the issue. These smaller pods probably arent all going to have gps or location trackers in them to cut costs so even if the pod can accurately report problems there is no garuntee the engineers will be able to quickly and easily find or know its general location to render assistance as needed.
Id also wager enough of these pods to carry enough passengers to equal a common commuter trainer would have a lot higher maintenance requirements compared to that commuter train, so despite charging higher ticket prices the company probably won't be making any more profit than if they just managed regular trains. I'd be willing to be anyone that concerned about privacy for commuting and willing to pay higher would just find that buying or renting a car or bike was just as cost effective and less restrictive than these pods.
TL;DR this entire exercise is a solution looking for a problem and is generally worse in every way that matters.
In order to work batteries need to have a certain amount of instability built in, on a chemical level. Them electrons have to want to jump from one material to a more reactive one; there is literally no other way. There is no such thing as a truly "safe and stable" battery chemistry. Such a battery would be inert, and not able to hold a charge. Even carbon-zinc batteries are technically flammable. I think these guys are stretching the truth a little for the layman, or possibly for the investor.
Lithium in current lithium-whatever cells is very reactive. Sodium on its own is extremely reactive, even moreso than lithium. Based on the minimal lookup I just did, this company appears to be using an aqueous electrolyte which makes sodium-ion cells a little safer (albeit at the cost of lower energy density, actually) but the notion that a lithium chemistry battery will burn but a sodium chemistry one "won't" is flat out wrong. Further, shorting a battery pack of either chemistry is not likely to result in a good day.
These are more fun then lipos... I wounder if u pack a tesla full of these..will it manage to achive escape velocity after a crash? I mean gas cars and lithium batteries right now just turn car into lots fo smoke and flames..but these might really change how we see crashes...
Edit: I feel like I need to add an /s somewhere...the amout of serious replies to this comment are concerning 🤦
That explosion doesent seem much bigger than a firework thats smaller than the battery’s size. With as much as a car weighs and the amount we already do to protect batteries in electric cars i imagine the explosion from these could be easier to manage safely than a lithium fire. I also wonder how harmful the fumes are compared to lithium
Yep, less/no fire is very important when creating battery banks with many cells. The probability of single cell failure spreading to adjacent cells is reduced, making a catastrophic failure of the entire bank less likely.
LiPo batteries of the same capacity actually have the potential to be much more dangerous than the sodium cell shown here.
LiPo packs typically use flat, soft walled cells which are far more susceptible to being punctured. In the event of a puncture or overcharge event, high temperature enduring flames are produced, with the severity and duration largely depending on the amount of energy within the cell. LiPo batteries also degrade at a much faster rate (both over time and with charge cycles) and have been known to spontaneously combust in storage while at rest.
With the sodium battery, the thrust produced by the puncture could have been easily been overcome by properly securing the cell.
It is definitely that. That's kind of the point, actually. Sodium is easier to come by than lithium and does not require mining it from unstable parts of the world, nor relying on China.
The appeal of China is largely in the size of the labor force. Whether this tech is more or less feasible than cobalt and lithium, businesses will still want to exploit the large volume of cheap Chinese labor in order to build them.
You who are so wise in the ways of science, can you explain to me if this is safe/will be super dangerous if exposed to water? Doesn't sodium, like, blow the fuck up when it comes in contact with water?
Well, metallic sodium liberates hydrogen real fast on contact with water, which I guess is tantamount to the same thing.
Yes. But not to the same level as just dropping a brick of pure sodium in a bathtub. In a battery like this there is not pure lithium/sodium/whatever just sloshing around inside. The sodium is tied up being chemically bonded with whatever the anode and cathode materials are. Only a minority of the available sodium is actually free in the form of ions carrying the charge from cathode to anode.
Just as with lithium-ion chemistry batteries, it is vital that the cells remain sealed from the outside because the materials inside will indeed react with air, water, and the water in the air. Exposing the innards will cause a rapid exothermic reaction, i.e. it will get very hot and optionally go off bang.
Okay, that makes a lot of sense. I was asking because I wondered how viable this would be in boats/ships, outdoor areas, off grid cabins, et cetera. Seems like it's basically the same thing, then, right? Like, proper battery maintenance and you're good?
Yeah throwing a piece of sodium metal into water will cause a violent reaction. Even touching it with your finger is bad because of the moisture on your skin.
But sodium chloride (table salt) dissolves in water easily and safely, resulting in an aqueous solution including sodium ions.
A couple decades ago I worked at a place that did power generation turbine controls.
One thing I worked on was a redundant sync check for connecting turbines to the grid. A turbine has to be brought up to speed, about 3600rpm in the US, before being connected to the grid. The sine wave coming out of the generator needs to match the sine wave on the grid.
If they are mismatched when the huge breaker closes, it’s not a shock or fire hazard, it’s an explosion hazard.
Is it even possible to have energy storage of any kind that is truly safe and stable? Some are better than others, of course.
considers
Kinetic energy of a body in orbit, I suppose. Like, you want to accelerate the Moon, you get a bigger orbit. We pull energy out of it via tidal generators, and in theory, we could speed its orbit up, increase its altitude.
I mean, it could theoretically smack into something, but it's not gonna hit the Earth very readily, and the speed of an object that isn't in Earth orbit, like an asteroid or something that hasn't been captured by Earth's gravitational field, is probably more of a factor in a collision than the speed of something that is.
At a smaller scale, I expect that thermal energy storage can be pretty safe, as long as you keep it within bounds. Like, if you wanted to insulate a lake and crank its temperature up or down ten degrees, probably not a lot that it could do even if the insulation was penetrated. The rate of energy release is gonna be bounded by convection.
I guess in my head I was implying that it was energy humans store for other humans to use at grid scale. When I said "of any kind” I guess that’s not what I meant, lol.
So in my line of thinking, you’re right about e.g. using the sun to heat a rock. But if we use the sun to heat something for electricity generation, or we heat some medium for energy storage, I bet that will be pretty potent.
Besides, past the small scale into the smallEST scale, it’s all just energy anyway, man. 😎
Doesn't take into account the reactivity difference with the matrix either. Solid state batteries are in a vitrified matrix essentially, and glass don't burn. Would make a lithium solid state battery likely safer than this.
This wouldnwork better on smaller scale, less traveled rural routes. Maintaining a whole ass train for a few dozen people is overkill. I kinda like this.
Depends on what you call a "whole ass train". Many of these routes could be easily service by a 1 or 2 car DMU like the rural routes in Scotland and Wales.
There are stations on Anglesey where you have to stick your arm out to hail the train, and the only two routes they lie on are served by the kind of 1970s DMU like you mentioned on its way to Chester or a Pendelino on its way to London or something.
I've used those request stops! Those sort of rural lines are exactly what we're missing here in the states, just bouncing back and forth on the line. You can see here Americans don't even know what they are, but they're the perfect solution for these lines going between little towns
They're definitely trains. I live next to a similar one. It is physically a train, with exactly the same hardware as trains on busier lines (though typically only hauling 1-2 carriages instead of 4+). It's just more fuel-efficient for a train to keep going through a station if nobody is getting on or off, so when passenger numbers are low, the practice is to let the driver know if you need on or off.
I live next to a railway line in the south west that is similar. A single train runs up and down the line. If you're on one of the stations, you wave to the train so it'll stop for you. If you're on the train and want to get off, you ask the driver to stop.
Seems like a train that uses both sides of the track fulfills different requirements. A train can only be made to go one way at a time, but can hold more people (increased bandwidth), but these smaller half-cars can be moving people in both directions at the same time (lower latency). Seems quite clever if it works out.
Would it though? It's just vans on tracks instead of roads.
It's not going to be more energy efficient with individually powered cabs. It's not going to be more convenient unless your origin and destination are near a station. It's not going to be more time efficient because of the extra distance getting to and from tracks and because you aren't going to drive highway speeds in tiny self-balancing cars on old rails, especially when passing cars going the opposite direction. It's not going to be more cost efficient because it's more total moving parts requiring maintenance per person per trip.
It sounds like they are solving the problem of turning around only for terminal stations. This might make sense for trains that carry many people, but if you're making cars on tracks there is no good solution. If you need to spend money on a system that turns the cabs around, then you either spend more money installing those systems at most stations or you spend money maintaining cabs that are driving around empty. Either way, cars on roads are cheaper.
They say it's good for people who don't want to wait for public transit, but they don't say how this solves that problem. With public transit, you know when the train will be there. With this, unless they have a way for the cabs to wait at the station without blocking other cabs going the same direction, you have to wait for a cab to come and you can't time your trip to the station around when the cab will be there. Maybe they have one? It would be a disaster if you wanted to get on from near the middle and needed to wait for either a cab that has already been vacated to come or for a cab to come all the way from the start of the track.
OK, it's 2pm. With this system, you call a pod and ride it. With a rural train, you check the schedule and see that the next train is at 5pm. And you have to plan your trip back as well. Great, time to take your car.
And you might say "let's have trains run at least once per hour then". That means running empty trains all day, not sure it's the best way to spend public money.
Old railway lines in Europe often aren't complete anymore and only cover relatively small distances.
There simply isn't enough infrastructure to handle a full train network and fixing them up would probably require existing infrastructure and buildings to be disowned and destroyed.
Desalination of water is basically an endless supply of salt, we can't just push it back into the ocean because that increases the salt concentration in the ocean which is actually not great and when done at scale. But we didn't really have anywhere else to put the salt because there's already an abundance of it for use elsewhere but if we start using salt for Batteries it would be a great place for salt from desalination to go
can’t just push it back into the ocean because that increases the salt concentration in the ocean which is actually not great and when done at scale
Only locally, it's absolutely not a problem globally. That water will go back into the ocean soon enough. We're not generally putting wastewater in aquifers. The same is true of lithium. Both sodium and lithium form salts that dissolve in water, so over time their biggest concentration is in the water and that's why we refine it from salt flats.
I don't consider the refining of lithium to be a huge problem, other than the fact that it usually just means they're trucking a bunch of water to the desert for concentration and evaporation ponds (or worse, using the local groundwater in the desert instead of trucking in desalinated water like they should be).
To put it into perspective, high lithium brine and ore reserves contain about 14 million tons of lithium. Seawater contains over 2 trillion tons. We currently have a yearly consumption somewhere under 200 thousand tons. We won't be hitting a lithium resource crunch anytime soon, it'll just get more expensive. If we ever get hydrogen fusion running, we'd have to separate a bunch of lithium-6 which makes up under 5 percent of lithium.
It depends on how local we're talking about. If you build a pipe out of the littoral zone into the ocean with multiple outputs you likely wouldn't kill much of anything but a few plankton. The intake pipe is often worse than the output pipe for wildlife.
For a place like, say, the the Persian Gulf, that uses oil for heat desal and gets their intake and output from a sea so it's all littoral and doesn't as quickly exchange it's water with the ocean, of course it's an environmental nightmare. It's naturally saltier without desal because of the higher evaporation rate and small comparative inlet size of the straight of hormuz, but at this point its 25% saltier than the rest of the ocean thanks to that desal.
I misspelled strait, but I was referring to the shallows that contain the vast majority of ocean life due to ease of photosynthesis with littoral. Much of the Persian Gulf is within these shallows. In a lot of ways it acts like a salty inland sea that exchanges some of it's saltier water with fresher water from the ocean, but that's limited by the size of the strait of Hormuz.
Desalination is also a good way of getting lithium right now, it's just a bit less cost effective than surface mining dried oceans currently. Maybe if sodium demand also goes up, it'll be effective to capture desalination salts for both lithium and sodium.
that increases the salt concentration in the ocean which is actually not great and when done at scale.
I dealt with CaSO4 (calcium-sulfur salt) dumping before. It is considered fine (by DNV) as long as it not in brackish waters or too close to the shore or in most of the North Sea. It's just adding salt to salt water, salt is supposed to go there.
I guess if you were doing it at insane scales it would be best to run a pipeline out, run your seapumps harder, or have ships do the dumping. Not sure.
Before anyone complains about energy density of these being less than lithium, the applications where these are used would reduce the demand for lithium, making lithium cheaper and/or more available for other purposes where sodium-ion wouldn't work.
For anyone wondering how the density actually compares, it seems that sodium batteries are a bit more than half the energy density of the best lithium batteries, but are a less mature technology so that may improve over time.
Judging from that graph, it looks like the sodium ion batteries are about as energy dense as Li-ion was in 2020, which is far from useless. Li-ion may still be the best but at a point, there's "good enough" for many applications (eg cellphones) if the price is low enough.
I would happily take a slight reduction in EV range if it meant the battery was significantly less expensive and the number of charge/discharge cycles would last the life of the car. Someone else said that with a rated 50,000 cycles, one charge cycle per day would last 137 years.
They aren't rated for 50,000 cycles. The ones I have seen are rated between Lithium Cobalt Oxide and Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries. They don't even come close to Lithium Titanate in charge cycles.
Not sure, but i get 420km range and it's dropped less than 5% after 110,000km, does 0-100 in 5 seconds. To be honest that's more than quick enough for me.
If it's nerfed a bit i definitely don't notice it.
Sodium based batteries have reached at least 247 Wh/kg in the lab at least. While lithium in the lab does have much higher instances, that isn't far off from current commercially available Li-ion EV batteries.
While such sodium batteries are not commercially available, it at least shows their potential to reach close to current EV batteries (around ~270 Wh/kg).
Sodium batteries are commercially available as of early this year. I've seen Hakadi and Sriko tested independently on Youtube -- they're the real deal (sodium has a unique charging curve), but they have the same/similar organic electrolyte as LFP cells (I believe Natron uses PBA on both anode and cathode plus water-based electrolyte).
The linked batteries all appear to have energy densities of about 130 Wh/kg or less.
I wasn't denying sodium batteries are not commercially available/viable, just pointing out that while currently available sodium batteries have lower energy density than lithium ion batteries, in the lab, sodium batteries have the ability to reach similar energy density to currently commercially available lithium ion batteries.
The linked batteries are plenty useful for many purposes. I would gladly use them for home energy storage, electronics, or recreation vehicle use. I'm generally wary of lithium battery safety in outdoor, or high heat environments, and look forward to safer options becoming more available/common.
These aren't going to shine as "I want to power my rc plane" batteries, but as someone else said, "[a house-powering battery] can be as large as it needs to be and buried in the back yard"
I'd love a giant sodium battery in a bunker that gathers energy from my wind/solar setup and powers everything without needing to connect to the US power grid.
As long as I can service my own windmill and panels with extra parts (I'm a big believer in both "have a backup" and "two is one and one is none" so always keep 3 spares of things around) I'm set on power during events that would shut down the neighbors.
The lower cost (and battery cost has been lowering drastically for many years based on my own RC dealings) will allow for mass-storage at low prices.
Opponents of renewable energy are running out of excuses, so they have to grasp at straws.
As usual there is absolutely no mention whatsoever anywhere in any of the articles I can find or from the company themselves about what the fucking price is
Since they say they're putting them out from 48V to 800V, 48V is what most inverter systems use, so I imagine they're targetting that size for "consumers" at the single-house PV system size. If the cycle counts and low temperature charging characteristics come true, they will be popular.
American manufacturers like this like to shoot themselves in the foot by pricing their new and innovative battery technology at the datacenter customer size, find out they have no market, use up all their capital, then sell the tech to a big Chinese company like BYD or CATL. So once they've complete this lifecycle, I'd expect a couple more years before they're readily available to actual consumers. Probably expect to see them then at about LFP prices, like $90/kWh wholesale price.
they say they're putting them out from 48V to 800V, 48V is what most inverter systems use, so I imagine they're targetting that size for "consumers" at the single-house PV system size.
48 volts is also what telecom uses in their infrastructure. That's a much bigger market (and one with deeper pockets) than consumer installs.
Then why bother putting the article here? Who out of us is going to actually care. I'm looking to expand the storage on my off-grid property and I would absolutely love something other than lithium especially if it can get cheaper per kilowatt hour. I got five acres to work with so I really don't care about the density just needs a decent cycle life and price
It's a great development that we should keep our eyes on, as some years into the future it will most certainly be available for regular consumers, including you with your install.
These aren't for you to buy directly, they are for manufacturers to negotiate a price and order in bulk from the company to then integrate them into their products or production facilities.
Late last year they were talking about $40 for a KWH which compared very favourably to LifePO4 that was more like $130 at the time and Li-ion that was more like $200. However right now on alibaba you can get a 200Ah battery for about $60 and the LifePO4 300Ah are now down in the $50 range which is an incredible drop in the space of 6 months. So in practice they are less dense and more expensive but I think its new technology introduction pricing and at some point it should be about a third cheaper than LifePO4 for the same capacity, all be it a bit bigger and heavier and quite considerably cheaper than Li-ion for the same capacity.
The small 18650 and other small sized cells have started appearing on aliexpress as well so its possible to get those too butt they are a lot more expensive than a basic Li-ion 18650 at the moment for a lot less capacity. I think its mostly the bigger cells that most people interested in Sodium Ion will be wanting (home battery and grid storage solutions and some of the low/mid range cars) more than small cells since typically the smaller stuff you want to maximise capacity even if it costs a bit more and most will want li-ion and ideally the newer nearly solid state li-ion that doubles capacity per KG.
Yes Louis Brennan designed a gyroscopic monorail in the early 1900's but there's a reason it didn't work out. Every car needs its own gyroscope which is a lot of dynamic components that need maintenance. A regular two rail train is much simpler and cheaper to operate. The idea these techbros have that everything is made better with individual pods is pretty wasteful when we already have better and cheaper solutions to virtually every problem they have tried to invent for us. Are we even super concerned about rural folks taking transit? By definition they are a small portion of the population and have the greatest need for personal transport. Where we need transit adoption is in urban areas with large populations who all want to drive their personal 2 tonnes of plastic and steel right into town and park it (for free obviously) in their own little parking space.
A gadgetbahn like this will only serve a limited population and won't be able to tie into the existing transit network. There might be niche situations where it's not a terrible idea but it is not a good generalized solution.
I could see those as an option for rural areas without much traffic. A full train might not be economical, but a small pod is. It could transport people to the closest proper train station where they can hop off.
But that would mean you'd have to maintain a ton of tracks for a handful of people.
Kids is one thing but I'm envisioning a balls version of the stick-in-the-spokes meme, with you writhing in agony in the road until an SUV comes along and puts you out of your misery.
I can't really tell from the visuals but it looks like they don't really get that close together. The two sides seem like they say hello to each other, but they don't really get that close. So presumably but there's quite some gap in the mechanism.
And then you can widen it to fit more people abreast. Then lengthen it to fit more people front to back. Then hook them together because a lot of people are going to the same destination... The new becomes old again.
newatlas.com
Top