TheaterFire

The first EV with a lithium-free sodium battery hits the road in January

Posted by oneonus@reddit | cars | View on Reddit | 149 comments

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149 Comments

Nyelz_Pizdec@reddit

this battery chemistry will not support the power current EVs are known for producing, which will result in extremely slow, less efficient vehicles. which honestly is going to be the way forward. they won people over with the power and performance of lithium and lied to them about its sustainability, they will then usher in the sodium chemistry EV replacement and people will be forced to accept extremely poor performing vehicles because internal combustion will already be outlawed of course.
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YakIndependent5474@reddit

Tesla started the trend of high power EVs as a way to gain market share and throw off the stigma that EVs are boring and slow. However, not every EV needs to be fast and these batteries will work well for their intended market.
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Nyelz_Pizdec@reddit

lol ok sure they will. i promise the majority of them will sit in some dystopian parking lot in china, with fake bill of sale to artificially inflate sales figures but sure. a totally unproven technology will absolutely be fine. the reddit gods are heavily invested (financially) in EV's, and their bots will manipulate upvotes/downvotes as they see fit. if you are naive enough to think otherwise, then its pointless for us to even have a conversation. and yes, thats exactly what i said, we were givin lithium power to distract us with speed, and afterwards they will slip this crap in its place and reserve the high performance lithium EVs for the extremely wealthy 1%, like yourself. easy for you to say, im sure. im not anti EV to be clear, im anti corruption, and unfortunately the majority of EV share holders are VERY evil people.
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FlamingoImpressive92@reddit

This is why you shouldn't use aluminium cookware
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Nyelz_Pizdec@reddit

aluminum toxicity puts hair on your chest, i wont stop. i want to be covered in hair every square inch of my body.
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ufs2@reddit

Yh sodium is basically limitless(seawater) and mining it is definitely more environmentally friendly than lithium
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Various-Ducks@reddit

Lithium is unlimited. Its not destroyed when its put in a battery. We could refine it back out. But we generally dont, because it takes more energy to recycle than to just mine more. Same reason we dont get our drinking water from the ocean.
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nucleartime@reddit

There just isn't a large, consistent reliable supply stream of recycled lithium. There aren't tens of millions of EVs worth of old battery that can consistently be delivered to factories and not bottleneck production.
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Various-Ducks@reddit

So until we start throwing away tens of millions of EVs theres no reason to recycle the batteries??
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HistorianEvening5919@reddit

Kind of, honestly. Economies of scale matter a lot and there just aren’t many lithium batteries to recycle currently. That will change quickly in the next 10-15 years, but for now it’s mostly startups trying to get scalable solutions in anticipation of having a regular feed supply of lithium batteries.
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Various-Ducks@reddit

There's lithium batteries available from other devices if it was actually cost effective to recycle them. [This article](https://www.corporateknights.com/category-circular-economy/the-vapes-we-throw-out-powering-thousands-of-evs/) claims that the disposable vapes thrown out every year just in the US have enough lithium to build 6,000 Tesla's. That's not even all vapes, just one particular type of vape. Now think of all the other devices with lithium batteries out there. Phones, laptops, tablets, watches, e-bikes, hoverboards, Bluetooth speakers, video game controller and portable systems, powerbanks, flashlights, cameras, power tools, etc etc. Thats enough stuff to keep a recycling plant busy. You could probably run a whole factory on vibrators alone.
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HistorianEvening5919@reddit

~6,000 teslas are built every day, so that’s not saying much. For reference a phone battery is 1/10,000th a car battery, and notably the recycling process for phone batteries and car batteries will generally vary because of the nature of the battery pack.
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Various-Ducks@reddit

If around [98.3%](https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/renewable/environmental-impacts-of-lithium-ion-batteries/) of lithium ion batteries end up in landfills and only roughly 5% of EV batteries are getting recycled today, if you had a better collection program there's your economies of scale. What are they waiting for?
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HistorianEvening5919@reddit

Economies of scale. More batteries will be made in 2030 than 2000 BC to 2023 AD. There’s just an insane amount of supply coming online: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/357887808/figure/fig4/AS:1169595763294232@1655864768791/Lithium-ion-battery-global-market-size-GWh-Source-Bloomberg-New-Energy-Finance-BNEF.png you keep thinking that we are making a lot of lithium batteries. We aren’t. Not even today. And virtually no lithium batteries are even dead in the context of what will be built, because while we aren’t making a lot of lithium batteries today, you could round literally all lithium battery production before 2018 to 0. But here’s another take that might surprise you. So what? What if we never recycle lithium batteries ever. That is fine. That means that we have discovered a way to find lithium for very cheap, or a way to make sodium/lithium-free batteries viable. Lithium recycling will kick up once there’s actual volume (no, vape pens are not actual volume) and only when it’s economically efficient to do so.
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Various-Ducks@reddit

You think we're talking about just EV batteries. I'm talking about all lithium ion batteries in all devices.
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HistorianEvening5919@reddit

Nope, I’m including all applications of lithium batteries. You clearly didn’t even look at the jpeg. 1. EV battery use exceeds all consumer applications combined. 2. In 2030 we will produce more lithium batteries than we have to date, in just that year alone.
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Simon676@reddit

No until tons of them start breaking, but they don't because they are reliable. Nissan literally had to cancel their battery recycling program because none of the Leafs were dying.
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Various-Ducks@reddit

That's not technically true. What Nissan did was cancel their battery replacement program, because nobody wanted to spend [$15,000](https://www.motorbiscuit.com/replacing-the-nissan-leaf-battery-is-insanely-expensive/) for a battery in a car worth $3k, and they're reusing them instead of recycling them. Just passing them along to someone else so they can put them in hoverboards and stuff until they're eventually thrown out. >Taking the battery out and putting a new battery in is not a viable proposition. It’s more sustainable to take the battery pack out of the car after 20 years, recycle the car, and reuse the battery. By far the easiest thing to do take the complete battery out of the vehicle, put it in a shipping container in a rack and plug that into a solar farm.
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Professional-Fee2235@reddit

Uh, the supply is not a problem. The fact recycling is more expensive than digging it out is.
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dwerg85@reddit

Heh, except that a bunch of places in the world do get their water from the sea.
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Various-Ducks@reddit

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2020/jan/02/the-salt-they-pump-back-in-kills-everything-is-the-cost-of-chiles-fresh-water-too-high
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dwerg85@reddit

I'm well aware of that. The place I live uses desalinated water, and we don't have an option other than that.
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Various-Ducks@reddit

Yes you do, but they're more expensive
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dwerg85@reddit

😂 By all means tell me of these options we supposedly have.
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noisymime@reddit

You can **always** pump fresh water from somewhere else, it just becomes stupidly expensive and inefficient f that somewhere else is a long way away.
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dwerg85@reddit

That sentence has so many asterisks behind it that you should probably have used a 'thin' setting on _always_ instead of a 'bold'. So yeah, by virtue of reasons brought up in your own comment, no, we don't have other options.
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noisymime@reddit

> by virtue of reasons brought up in your own comment, no, we don't have other options. So you acknowledge there are other options, but then say there are none? The original comment here is that there are other options but they're more expensive, which is absolutely correct.
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dwerg85@reddit

Dude, I'm going to assume you're intelligent and that you understand that while certain things are _technically_ possible on paper, real world geopolitical and financial circumstances make them impossible to achieve. And thus they are in fact _not_ possible or options at all.
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Various-Ducks@reddit

Yes, that's literally what "too expensive" means...
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Various-Ducks@reddit

https://pacinst.org/desalination-and-alternative-supplies/
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w0nderbrad@reddit

Pretty sure they mined all this salt from anti-EV idiots that post in every EV thread and cry about range and coal powered electricity
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Link_GR@reddit

"wHaT aBoUt ThE cObAlT mInInG?" I like how they pretend as if oil is clean and doesn't also require a shitton of energy to extract, ship, refine and then transport to gas stations around the world. Yeah, definitely more efficient than a centralized power grid...
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Professional-Fee2235@reddit

Well, that does depend on what your grid runs on. If energy is green, EVs are green, if it runs on coal plants, well, not really. If it runs on natural gas... just put the damn gas into the car directly.
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HistorianEvening5919@reddit

Even if the grid is 100% natural gas EVs are notably cleaner than gas cars. Like it’s not even close. Coal is more of a toss up, since people will say “well if you just drive a Prius!” And many EV buyers will say “yeah but I was between this and a V6” or whatever, compare like for like etc. But on a 100% natural gas grid? EVs are about half as polluting than even the most ecologically sound hybrids.
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eugay@reddit

EVs are still cleaner even on coal. Also, headline for you, 40% of US grid is emission free now.
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Professional-Fee2235@reddit

If you compare it to V8 truck, sure, maybe but not to decent hybrid > Also, headline for you, 40% of US grid is emission free now. That's why I said it depends on country's power sources in the first place you mouldy potato. Apparently headline for you should be something like "most americans can't read with understanding"...
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Activehannes@reddit

>but not to decent hybrid Yeah I'd like to see a source on that because this is BS
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HistorianEvening5919@reddit

He’s not really wrong if it’s literally 100% coal. Which doesn’t exist anywhere on planet earth. Coal is about 1kg per kWh. Gasoline is 8.8 kg per gallon. Both those are lifecycle/total emissions. So 8.8 kWh = 1 gallon. So for a model 3 that’s 35 mpg on a 100% coal grid. A Camry hybrid might be around 50 mpg. But it’s worth noting that the average in the US (which is falling over time) is 0.37 kg per kWh in 2022. So now that model 3 is getting 95 mpg, and every year the mpg goes up 1-3 mpg (will likely be 98 mpg in 2023 by current estimates). Even the crappiest most coal-intense grids in America are clean enough to make an EV way less polluting than gas.
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league_starter@reddit

No child slave labor with oil
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Activehannes@reddit

Most ignorant comment on the internet. Slave labor is literally legal in the official laws in many middle eastern countries Look up kafala system
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Link_GR@reddit

Ooh, boy, wait till you find out about Saudi Arabia and how most of the Middle East operates!
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snoo-suit@reddit

Slave labor and child soldiers in Nigerian oil.
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gumol@reddit

besides cobalt
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elinyera@reddit

You have a point but we create way more stuff than gas for cars.
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Vandrel@reddit

Not to mention oil refinement uses cobalt.
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Link_GR@reddit

In Greek we have a saying: "Half of knowledge is worse than no knowledge". All these people think they're being really clever and there's some huge conspiracy when all they're doing is regurgitating Big Oil propaganda, sometimes knowingly.
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YakIndependent5474@reddit

I love how anti-EV people driving their deleted lifted trucks suddenly care about the environment when it comes to lithium mining. I’d much rather have localized, controlled pollution at lithium mines over them rolling coal everywhere.
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Various-Ducks@reddit

Heres something i thought was interesting, since you mentioned coal. These sodium ion batteries are partly made of coal. No seriously. HiNa literally uses coal for the anode. Specifically "anthracite", which is the purest, cleanest burning grade of coal. The process for turning the anthracite into the form needed to make the anode, and im not making this up, involves [putting the anthracite in a furnace](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2405829716301994) and heating to over 1000°C. So this battery is literally made from coal we burned, but not for electricity. The electricity used could potentially have come from burning coal. So its possible that they burned coal to power the furnace that burned the other coal to make the battery and then that battery might be charged by burning more coal.
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impossiblefork@reddit

Transforming anthracite in this manner doesn't burn the coal.
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Various-Ducks@reddit

Something is being burned, in that link they say they lose about 10% in the furnace.
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impossiblefork@reddit

Probably hydrocarbons present in the anthracite decomposing into carbon and hydrogen, with the hydrogen being released.
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Various-Ducks@reddit

Sounds like burning to me
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impossiblefork@reddit

It would be burning if there was oxidation, but surely carbon-hydrogen bonds take energy to form, i.e. they have positive enthalpy of formation. Consequently we aren't taking energy out of the asphalt as it naturally breaks apart, rather we are putting energy in in order to break it apart.
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Various-Ducks@reddit

I think the opposite of burning is freezing lol /s
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snoo-suit@reddit

Presumably the /s means you're posting something you know is false?
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Various-Ducks@reddit

The s stands for sarcasm
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snoo-suit@reddit

Looking forward to false claims that this small amount of coal is a huge problem.
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sturo@reddit

Same as the seawater, unlimited.
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Ya-im-that-guy@reddit

Seawater is almost as salty as Tesla fanbois who cry when people criticize Elon Musk and call the critics "anti-EV idiots". A la /u/w0nderbrad .
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MeMoses@reddit

There's criticism and then there's "I can't drive 700 miles in one go every day, EVs suck. And did you know that charging a EV with purely coal power is bad".
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w0nderbrad@reddit

Oh shit another salt miner crying about Teslas and EVs. Just keep coming out of the woodwork.
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miked1be@reddit

I’ve seen plenty of people that both like what Elon says about a lot of things and spread disinformation about EVs. Similarly, plenty of people that like or at least accept EVs that don’t like Elon at all.
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SonnySwanson@reddit

Is fresh water a byproduct as well? If so, the desalination projects that have been on hold for decades in the western US might actually have a positive ROI case now.
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snoo-suit@reddit

The two most common ways of making salt are mining and evaporation of seawater. Neither process produces fresh water -- in the evaporation case, the water ends up in the atmosphere.
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SonnySwanson@reddit

Yes, but desalination would also produce salt as a byproduct. It's more expensive, but if you need the freshwater as well, then it might just be more economically viable if the price of salt increases substantially.
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snoo-suit@reddit

Why would the price of salt increase substantially?
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SonnySwanson@reddit

Did you read the article?
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dwerg85@reddit

Because right now it’s not a combined process I’d say. A waste product of desalinating water is a brine that could potentially be pumped into ponds and evaporated to get salt. Right now that brine is dumped back into the sea with debatable consequences for the flora and fauna.
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snoo-suit@reddit

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41545-022-00153-6
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PoopSlinger23@reddit

I believe it when it becomes reality
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FlamingoImpressive92@reddit

Literally is, did you not read the article?
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PoopSlinger23@reddit

I mean beyond a company you’ve never heard of in a foreign country. And in actual production numbers. It’s like the occasional articles you see about some promising cancer drug, then never hear of it again.
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mintyjad@reddit

While this doesn't fix lithium EVs biggest problem( battery failure totalling a car after a decade and change ), at least it brings them closer to say a 5 year old iPhone where a battery is only 10% what the phone is worth after depreciation. I know cars depreciate a lot differently but this is just an example I like to use since I deal with a lot of dead and puffy batteries
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FlamingoImpressive92@reddit

Its funny how the battery "fails totalling the car" always seems to happen using the formula: (current age of oldest Model S) + 2 years. ​ In 2015 it was " battery failure totalling a car after 5 years", then in 2017 "5 years plus change", then \~2019 we saw a shift to the current 10 year consensus. 2023 has had the plus change added, have you decided yet when the timeline for when "15 years" and "15 years plus change" is going to be?
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Utter_Rube@reddit

As EVs become more common, I fully expect the aftermarket to start offering compatible battery pack replacements for a fraction of the price of the OEMs, just as how if my car's transmission failed today, I'd get a reman unit swapped in by an independent shop rather than pay the dealership to replace it.
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Professional-Fee2235@reddit

Transmission isn't half of the car's value. You might find used/refurbished as replacement in 10 years but there will be no reasonably priced aftermarket ones, it's just too big part of car's value.
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Professional-Fee2235@reddit

Manufacturers are switching to LFP and both LFP and Sodium based batteries can run far more cycles than lithium ion. with 5k cycles you're looking at easily 20+ years before your battery drops to 80% capacity. Not being able to get replacement battery after 10 years is a bigger problem, as any damage to car's battery is basically car being totalled
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time_to_reset@reddit

I've heard some claims about sodium batteries have longer lifespans than lithium batteries, but from what I can find they last fewer cycles. About 5,000 cycles vs 8,000-10,000 for lithium iron phosphate. All that information is from early 2023. Does anyone know if there's been recent developments that dramatically increase the 5,000 number? Similarly there's claims about sodium batteries being able to be discharged deeper without averse effects, but I can't find much on that either. Longer lifespans and lower cost has a ton of potential for residential energy storage. I'm excited.
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1731799517@reddit

5000 cycles is alrady enought for the abttery to outlast the rest of the car. Just do the math how much driving distance this correlates to.
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LegitimateIncrease95@reddit

Then why are people worried about existing batteries degrading? Do they not do as well as the manufacturer claims?
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FlamingoImpressive92@reddit

Because passive-cooled small batteries in phones degrade noticeably over the lifespan of a phone, so people extrapolate 1:1 for the large BMS-balanced liquid-cooled packs in a car. Humans are generally scared of change and lots are scared to admit they played a part in a problem (however minuscule); the growth of EV's is a physical on-the-road reminder of both these things. Naturally when scared people lash out, so you get lots of passionate arguments with little actual facts behind them.
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JtheNinja@reddit

NCA/NCM lithium batteries don’t last as long, more like 1000-2000 cycles. And since they have the best energy density and are the most mature tech, they’re what’s in most EVs. Especially higher-end ones, due to the energy density thing. It’s still a few hundred thousand miles for a typical pack, but not quite in the range of “you are never, ever using all of this” that sodium and LFP EV packs have. Also, most people have experience with lithium ion batteries in personal electronics, and have experienced their phone battery degrading after 2-3 years. If you don’t know better, it’s logical to worry the lithium ion battery in your car will go the same way. (EV batteries are temp controlled and due to their size get cycled much less often than phone batteries, hence why this isn’t actually a problem on the timescales it happens with your phone)
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Professional-Fee2235@reddit

5k cycles is already "drive from full to zero and charge back to full every single day for 13 years" so for car use there isn't really reason to chase more cycles in battery tech. I dunno how age-related capacity drop looks like, but with 5k cycles the battery could live thru good 20+ years of typical use.
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Head_Crash@reddit

China slowly taking over the global auto market... 💀
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kyonkun_denwa@reddit

While it will take me a long time to be convinced to buy a Chinese car (hell, I had to basically get a 50% discount on a Korean car to consider keeping it), I am glad that they offer the potential for competition. The entrenched OEMs have become WAY too complacent and they really need a fire lit under their asses.
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TurkeyBLTSandwich@reddit

It's going to be real "funny" when the domestic American brands cry foul once they're run out by cheaper subsidized Chinese cars. American domestic brands nuked public transit and pushed heavily for tax dollars to fund oil and car infrastructure. And now China will get to benefit from all that effort. Thanks Nixon
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Icutsman@reddit

Wasn't Nixon for public transit? Eisenhower pushed the Interstate system I thought
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kyonkun_denwa@reddit

Yeah I don’t understand that part of the post. Nixon is on record saying things like >”Buses are an attractive alternate to private-car use, because we have finally learned that it is impossible to build highways fast enough to make driving pleasant” > “About a quarter of our population lack access to a car. For these people—especially the poor, the aged, the very young and the handicapped—adequate public transportation is the only answer.” > “Freeways that adversely affect our environment cannot be built.” Ironic, really, for someone who was previously a car salesman.
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FlamingoImpressive92@reddit

He almost sounds not completely like a bastard there
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kyonkun_denwa@reddit

>American domestic brands nuked public transit and pushed heavily for tax dollars to fund oil and car infrastructure. And now China will get to benefit from all that effort. Japan has been benefiting from that effort long before China could even think about arriving on scene. North America is the largest market for Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Mazda and Subaru. It’s Mitsubishi’s third-largest market despite the fact that they are very much an also-ran brand here. Japan basically waltzed in after the American automakers moulded our postwar development to suit their interests, just like “thanks gaijins, we’ll take it from here”
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Telvin3d@reddit

After never personally knowing anyone with a Mitsubishi in my life, I know a couple who have bought them in just the last year for their hybrids. It will be interesting to see if they can capitalize on changing trends
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kyonkun_denwa@reddit

Yeah not too many Mitsus compared to other Japanese brands. One of my friends had a Mitsubishi Endeavor, which originally belonged to his parents and then got passed down to him. I remember it was reliable but the 3.8L V6 absolutely GUZZLED fuel, and it wanted premium to boot. Interior wasn’t great either. Overall not a bad car but still an uncompetitive car relative to Highlander, Pilot, etc. As for modern Mitsubishis, I would actually consider an Outlander PHEV. Probably more reliable than the regular Outlander, since it uses a 4B12 and doesn’t have a transmission per se, which beats the Nissan QR25DE and Jatco CVT in the standard model. Also, unlike the RAV4 Prime, it can be purchased *right now* for MSRP.
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V8-Turbo-Hybrid@reddit

Right now, they're in trouble too, they're behind in EV effort and losing some market share in South East Asia. Consider how Japanese automakers so relying America market, they're actual more wanting America government for help.
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stav_and_nick@reddit

Remember when driving a Japanese car around union heavy areas meant your car might be keyed or had its windows smashed? Happened to my dad with his first Toyota back in the 80s in Oshawa If anything, the current trade war is pretty tame compared to that
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kyonkun_denwa@reddit

Yeah my uncle had the windows of his Honda Civic smashed in downtown Oshawa in the 1980s. His car had been keyed repeatedly. All this shit stopped after he moved to Lindsay in the early 90s. Union workies can be such idiots, honestly. Like… violence is supposed to convince me to buy the product you make? If anything, such actions are going to make me want to double down against ever buying anything made with CAW/Unifor labour.
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College_Prestige@reddit

The government's already trying to get the chinese tariff increased (it's already 25%). The Detroit 3's leadership is too complacent right now.
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Drzhivago138@reddit

What did Nixon have to do with public transit?
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WanganTunedKeiCar@reddit

Nah, rather rapidly! Considering the head start American and European automakers have had, the extent to which China has caught up with competitive cars, just in the past decade and a half, is nothing short of impressive. The potential for competitive innovation is really exciting to me
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stav_and_nick@reddit

Having followed it for awhile it’s always surprising that alarm bells didn’t start ringing in the west earlier. I mean, Chinese brands have been aggressively recruiting designers and engineers from German, Japanese, and Korean brands for the last decade. Did no one say “hey, maybe we should put more effort into retention?”
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WanganTunedKeiCar@reddit

Yeah, one of the first moments where I realised something interesting was happening with Chinese EVs was reading news of NIO's battery swapping, about 7 years ago at this point. Though it's still not a really widespread, successful system today, it did make it clear we'd be seeing important developments from China. I don't really know why Western manufacturers haven't been putting up more of a fight. I know China's government's regulations and encouragement of EV adoption played a major part, but still, shouldn't all that potential money talk a bit more?
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YakIndependent5474@reddit

NIO has 2,100 battery swap stations and does nearly 30,000 automated battery swaps per day now that take less than 5 minutes each. It’s very successful and widespread.
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HistorianEvening5919@reddit

Eh, maybe..but hard to see this being the way forward. A battery swap station still has to charge and store multiple ~1,000 lb batteries so it’s not like you avoid the power requirements. Chargers are far cheaper, and as a result more numerous. Tesla added over 12,000 stalls in the last year alone for example. Current fast charging leaders are 18 min for 10-80% for consumer models, but there’s one coming out that’s allegedly 12 minutes. I could maybe see this for taxis and rentable cars in cities where you don’t own the battery/don’t care about the batteries health…but otherwise I think most people wouldn’t want to risk getting a bad battery, and if most cars get down to 10 min for 10-80% charge I don’t think consumers will mind much.
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LegitimateIncrease95@reddit

Tesla had battery swapping, but abandoned the concept. It was impractical…
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IsaacM42@reddit

Early Teslas were required to have that as part of some government money deal, never panned out.
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Head_Crash@reddit

It's not even that. China is pumping out desirable high performance EV's while the west clings to body on frame V8 pickups.
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stav_and_nick@reddit

Personally I think it was just a right place right time thing. First gen EVs were complete trash: no one in the west would buy a 100 km range EV. Maybe 50,000 units a year in every western country combined. But China has a huge population for which a 100km EV would fit their commute AND any car being an upgrade from a motorbike. You could do 50,000 sales a month with that That slowly lead to supply chains, economies of scale, etc which eventually lead to not complete shit EVs which could actually be used as real cars. You either needed those freebie sales or a billionaire willing to take the L for nearly a decade before returns started happening Imo if it wasn’t China it would have been India or Indonesia or some other 3rd world country with similar economic backgrounds
View on Reddit #16798979

HistorianEvening5919@reddit

I mean china in many cities made the decision easy for consumers. Would you like to own a car? If so, it will be EV. Then over time EVs in China sucked less…but the first were much worse than the leaf.
View on Reddit #16898766

DishRelative5853@reddit

Led
View on Reddit #16799448

FiddlerOnThePotato@reddit

zeppelin? hell yeah
View on Reddit #16809831

nucleartime@reddit

China has politicians that also pushed really hard for it because they saw an opportunity to eat our lunches. They also do some terrible authoritarian shit, but they have better economic planning than, uh, _insert hated senator of choice_.
View on Reddit #16806351

Professional-Fee2235@reddit

> while the west clings to body on frame V8 pickups. That's just US lmao
View on Reddit #16858125

Ceramicrabbit@reddit

They also steal a fuck ton of intellectual property
View on Reddit #16838650

just-a-pers@reddit

It's incredible how fast china was able to transition from "trash cars" to incredible cars that put German brands to shame. I've started watching wheels boy, an English reviewer in China and the cars they have there are absolutely amazing and they're so far ahead with self driving tech too.. I wish them all the best, the Chinese making great EVs will only spur competition and customers all over the world will benefit from it.
View on Reddit #16790569

BlueKnight44@reddit

Lol wat? BYD's I have been in abroad have all been complete garbage. Rattles everywhere and weird(bad) suspension tuning causing resonances over bumps. Infotainment that barely works. Every western reviewer I have seen agrees. They have a decent start, but they are only gaining market share because they are cheap. It is going to be a while before Chinese OEM's can put all that IP they have been stealing from the foreign OEM's that manufacturer in China to good use.
View on Reddit #16856408

FearlessTomatillo911@reddit

>It's incredible how fast china was able to transition from "trash cars" to incredible cars that put German brands to shame. No, they aren't putting the German brands to shame.
View on Reddit #16794498

double_nieto@reddit

BYD is definitely running laps around Volkswagen in EVs
View on Reddit #16794926

FearlessTomatillo911@reddit

I'd rather have an Audi e Tron than any BYD car
View on Reddit #16795649

scrubdiddlyumptious@reddit

You’re comparing vehicles in different price brackets? What mass market affordable EVs does Audi offer again? Meanwhile for higher end EVs I’d rather have a XPeng, Nio, Zeekr, Li, Polestar, etc than anything from Audi atm.
View on Reddit #16819265

FearlessTomatillo911@reddit

Audi's are Volkswagen, the id cars aren't good but that doesn't mean Volkswagen doesn't make some good evs
View on Reddit #16820362

just-a-pers@reddit

E Tron is actually a terrible car as s a EV. Smaller than a model s Heavier than a model S Slower than a model s Lower top speed than model s Twice the price of a model s Less efficient than a model s Less range than model s
View on Reddit #16805755

FearlessTomatillo911@reddit

Well yeah, it wouldn't be my top choice as an EV but I'd still rather have one than a BYD vehicle.
View on Reddit #16812747

horseshitpanedmic@reddit

But guitar string doors.
View on Reddit #16806049

762_54r@reddit

> china was able to transition from "trash cars" to incredible cars that put German brands to shame Source? lmao
View on Reddit #16797716

raulsagundo@reddit

I'm reading this more as VW using China to test a new technology. Not nearly as many pesky lawyers if things go wrong.
View on Reddit #16797666

surf_greatriver_v4@reddit

what will be the oil shills talking point now
View on Reddit #16819646

league_starter@reddit

The ev resale value is basically zero after warranty runs out. Basically a German car
View on Reddit #16828323

Utter_Rube@reddit

Man I'd love to snag a couple of EVs just past their warranty period for "basically zero" dollars, can you point me in the right direction? Can't seem to find any myself
View on Reddit #16831041

MrSamsungNote8@reddit

While I'm an ev supporter, you can't deny these things (with a couple exceptions) depreciate like rocks. My poelstar 2 is not even 2 years old and has halved in value with 10k miles 6 months ago. My previous bmw i3 I purchased used for $15k, down from 50-60k when new. Ask any model s/x owner how they feel about depreciation. Or how about mercedes eqs owners and audi etron gt owners, whose cars went from 110k to 60k in 1 year. >warranty period for "basically zero" dollars Bmw i3, chevy bolt, nissan leaf are all easy to find near 10k. Old model s can be had under 20k. Free? No. 1/2 to 2/3 the price of a new corolla? Definitely.
View on Reddit #16957010

Telvin3d@reddit

That any vehicle that can’t tow a trailer across three states without stopping is impractical for their family that hasn’t left a fifty mile radius in the last decade.
View on Reddit #16886138

Darkhoof@reddit

Would love to see this battery tech used for energy storage more than EVs. But this is also an interesting city car.
View on Reddit #16813771

SimpleImpX@reddit

Grid storage has always been the primary use case and focus for sodium ion-batteries. Since the grid storage use case benefits the most from their potential to be one cheapest rechargeable and since low specific energy (Wh/kg) is a non-factor for stationary storage. There are tons of research and pilot projects experimenting with them for grid storage right now. Seeing them being used in EVs this soon is actually kinda surprising since "high" volume production of them used to have abyssal specific energy last time I checked. Like something in the 70 Wh/kg range, it would almost have like going back to lead-acid (35 Wh/kg), but if they have actually hit mass production of 120 Wh/kg cell(*?) then sure. That might only be around 2/5th of good NCM/NCA cells, but not too far from some LFP cells that are already seen in many cheaper EVs. In my option it is still way too heavy for all-round capable EVs that consumers in more developed countries demand, but becoming viable for cheap short range city cars. *? This is were specific energy numbers often get very fuzzy. Is it specific energy free standing (i.e. typical research lap numbers), including metal cell structure or complete battery pack structure.
View on Reddit #16834673

Telvin3d@reddit

I wonder if anyone will do two battery versions for their cars? A 100 mile city version with these and then a 300 mile road trip version with lithium?
View on Reddit #16886252

SimpleImpX@reddit

I doubt it. It's complicated and costly to support and juggle two high voltage battery systems with two different characteristics, that alone mostly if not completely negates the small cost benefit of the cheaper battery. A large single large battery also has often forgotten benefits of both increased power and reduced wear when the load is fully distributed over a single large battery pack. I.e. the larger the battery pack the less each cell is strained and cycled resulting in greater than linear increase durability relative to size increasement. For example cycling a cell 90% -> 10% one time degrades it far more than cycling it 8 times 80% -> 70% for the same energy amount. Similarly reducing required power drain from each cell by spreading it over more cells can also increases its expected lifespan. Unless the gap between best in class rechargeable with poor durability superior capacity and cheap high durability high power batteries were to become wider we are unlikely to see dual battery type solutions anytime soon. However that might change in the future. Today if you are going to have dead weight only for long range then a regular PHEV (or ranged extened BEV) using ICE engine for the extra range is more economical and practical. At least for now. Another related alternative range extending is by using non-rechargeable metal-air (be it aluminium, lithium, sodium, etc) battery combined with automatic battery swapping. Not cost efficient at all since these batteries have to be recycled after one use, but if you want stupid high energy density for niche applications then you go metal-air. If cheap automatic refurbishing of any kind of metal-air batteries becomes viable then this very well may become a thing. Still the recycling process is always going to be relatively energy wasteful process so I have my doubt, but there is quite bit of research and investment being put into this.
View on Reddit #16933816

HistorianEvening5919@reddit

120-150 miles in a sedan form factor seems excellent for a second car, or a commute car (say 25 miles there, 25 miles back) that isn’t used for road trips. If EVs are cheap enough people won’t care about the range.
View on Reddit #16899494

hotweiss@reddit

Isn't the price of these batteries 1/100th of the price of a lithium battery?
View on Reddit #16835714

1731799517@reddit

No. Funny enough, the lithium is only a small part of the cost of a lithium battery, the anode materials (cobalt, manganese, nickel) are a significantly bigger contribution. So its cheaper, but like half the price instead of a percent.
View on Reddit #16848319

HistorianEvening5919@reddit

However something really important it does do is reduce any lithium supply crunch. It provides a natural pressure release valve for the EV market. Making 270 mile lfp model 3s but lithium pricing is crazy? Switch to 200 mile model 3s by swapping out the pack seamlessly until new lithium mines open up etc.
View on Reddit #16899629

1731799517@reddit

Lithium supply is not the issue, so this scenario would not occure.
View on Reddit #16913211

waituhsecond@reddit

We’ll see if it actually works. It’s an interesting concept though no doubt about it.
View on Reddit #16796804

faizimam@reddit

It's absolutely works. And current products for sale are available and being sold. The tech is little worse than LFP lithium ion, and considerably cheaper.
View on Reddit #16822773

crshbndct@reddit

And, given that the most expensive part of an EV is the battery, and also the fact that current EVs can fit much larger batteries than they actually do, I don't think the slight decrease in range is really an issue. Most EVs come in 2-3 battery size options. What is this Sodium Chemistry like as far as degradation goes?
View on Reddit #16837092

noisymime@reddit

> What is this Sodium Chemistry like as far as degradation goes? Currently the general number thrown around is 5000 cycles to reach about 80% capacity, which is good but lower than lithium. It's still somewhat early days for the tech though and there are multiple companies talking about 10,000 to 30,000 cycles for next generation sodium batteries.
View on Reddit #16852367

HistorianEvening5919@reddit

Real world will be telling. 2,000 cycles would be more than sufficient honestly. Range of an EV on the low end might be 150 miles, that’s 300k miles. For grid applications 5000 may be more desirable.
View on Reddit #16899332

crshbndct@reddit

Apparently it also charges faster?
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mypod49@reddit

I’m pretty salty that they aren’t bringing this to the states.
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YakIndependent5474@reddit

Innovation and forward thinking are stifled by politicians here.
View on Reddit #16853231

Retr0Blade@reddit

This doesn't fill me with hope, please for the love of god just fund you VAG money into sludge fuel that ICEs can use
View on Reddit #16796451

WhiteZwall@reddit

Good
View on Reddit #16795389

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View on Reddit #16785539