A sodium-ion portable power bank comes to market

ldoughty · 2025-03-25T12:37:28 1742906248

Seems like the painful point of sodium-ion is mainly the weight/size (per unit of power)...

Is that something that can catch up, or is it simply a density issue that can't be terribly optimized?

Right now it looks like it takes ~75% more space for the equivalent power... after two decades like Lithium-ion has had, can that reach current density/size for the same power, or will it hit a cap?

Still nice to see a battery tech hit the market.

jillesvangurp · 2025-03-25T13:01:40 1742907700

Lithium on paper has better energy density because of where the element sits on the periodic table. Sodium is pretty close though. So, it's unlikely to push lithium out of the market for a lot of use cases.

Both chemistries are likely to continue to improve. And sodium ion is still pretty new. There might be some solid state batteries based on sodium ion at some point. Lithium ion solid state batteries are much closer to market ready (multiple manufacturers have announced product roll outs over the next few years).

For a lot of use cases, cost and safety might be more important than energy density. There are a lot of different chemistries at this point.

This device is a bit on the heavy side but not overly so. 350 grams is not that heavy. Probably price and longevity are more decisive factors for people that would buy this. And the safety is a nice bonus.

hadlock · 2025-03-25T12:48:33 1742906913

The big deal is it's made out of sodium. Anyone with access to sea water (which is full of Na + Cl) can make these batteries, and it's unlikely we're going to run out of sea water in the near future, or even next 3 billion years.

Sodium batteries will probably be the go-to for grid scale battery in (wild guess) ten years and some of the ultra-cheap electronics. Sodium, Li-ion and lifepo4 all have significant overlap in the 2.5-3.7v range so there's a lot of potential for compatibility/interoperability

Compare with lithium batteries, which currently there's only a handful of high quality lithium deposits that are convenient to be mined

lightedman · 2025-03-25T12:58:15 1742907495

Sodium is huge and heavy compared to Lithium, at almost quadruple everything, and then it has 3 valence rings instead of 2 compared to lithium. The density issue is very much limited by this, in a physical sense.

1970-01-01 · 2025-03-25T12:46:31 1742906791

Expect sodium-ion to overwhelm the electric scooter and ebike markets. They're the trifecta of cheap, safe, and reliable. Size will come down as they mature mass production.

HPsquared · 2025-03-25T12:49:38 1742906978

They're a step beyond LFP on those dimensions. Is LFP common in e-bikes yet?

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