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CATL says next-gen sodium-ion battery supports 500 km range, readies for 2026 mass production (carnewschina.com)
submitted 11 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/48958993

energy density of 175 Wh/kg

CATL explained that sodium-ion batteries have slightly lower energy density than lithium-ion batteries but provide distinct advantages in low-temperature performance, carbon footprint, and safety.

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[–] 68 points 11 months ago (3 children)

I really hate how all these headlines give battery capacity as a distance, as though that was a meaningful measure or allowed comparing different technologies.

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  • [–] 19 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    But it's all stupid people and marketing people understand more=better cheaper=better. I think it's why ev adoption has been so poor, questions I get asked are what's the range like? Doesn't it take forever to charge? And aren't they really expensive?

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  • [–] 6 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    They do the same thing with grid storage batteries and I hate it. "Our battery lasts 20 hours!" Think it was a better unit like watts per 4 hours but media and marketing mess with it.

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  • [–] 5 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    People understand time.

    People have no fucking idea how much their crap uses. So giving the watthour is literally pointless.

    It's a nice statistic to have.

    But for cars, giving a cars range in watthours is like saying the road trip is 8.3 gallons of gas.

    JUST TELL ME HOW LONG IT WILL TAKE TO GET THERE OR HOW FAR IT IS.

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  • [–] 7 points 11 months ago

    I think the issue in this case is that the range of this specific car and battery doesn’t convey the impact of the battery innovation. If they gave an example of the range with that car and battery size using current battery tech to demonstrate the improvement, I think that would be more helpful.

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  • [–] 0 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    It’s a ballpark number. It says to me “competitive with LiIon on capacity though not beating it yet.”

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  • [–] 7 points 11 months ago

    It's not though. Range is determined by how much battery is in a car, I could build a car with 500km worth of Ni-MH but it would be mostly battery.

    Does the same car with 500km worth of lithium batteries have more or less trunk space than 500km of these batteries? I have no idea. I do know the sodium batteries will weigh a bit more, because the article actually gives Wh/kg - and that makes sense since sodium the metal is denser than lithium, but the headline is meaningless.

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