National French research agency announcement: https://www.cnrs.fr/fr/cnrsinfo/batteries-sodium-ion-une-pre...

The power tool : https://www.leroymerlin.fr/produits/outillage/outillage-elec...

Unfortunately, all I could found about the Wh/kg efficiency was an article about the same company saying they were currently able to build cells at 90Wh/Kg in 2017.

Nevertheless, it's not a promise, it's a product currently on sale.

I found an article from 2021 where they were claiming 90Wh/kg to 120Wh/kg, and that they would not go beyond that. They argue that their strength is fast charging, not high energy density, with charges to full capacity in less than 10 minutes.

https://www.ecinews.fr/fr/tiamat-energy-lance-la-production-...

As I wrote a few days ago, once charging is below 10 minutes, charging stations work just like gas stations in terms of throughput. We will see gas stations converting directly from gas pumps to chargers. (Unclear if gas pumps can coexist near high-powered chargers; gasoline vapor and high voltage electricity should not be in the same space.)

3min is better than 10min, but ask anyone if they'd prefer to fuel up 3 times slower and pay half the cost and I bet most everyone would say they would.

For fueling up, you must be there until it's done. For charging you don't. You connect your car and go inside the convenience store. With 10min, that's excellent. Chances are most everyone will either exit their vehicles, plug it in, go back inside their vehicle for 10min, walk around for a bit, or go to the store for a quick errant. In any of those cases the experience will be better than dealing with fuel.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_Place_%28company%29

The idea is to use smaller batteries for cheaper and lighter cars. Range is less but batteries are swappable for long trips.

[1] https://electrek.co/2023/11/21/nio-is-joining-forces-with-a-...

https://youtu.be/qd0WPw3p2MQ

Lets not stop there, you also want to be able to dispose of the battery if you can no longer control the heat.

Currently the solution is to submerge the entire car or let it burn out on the spot. Takes about 2 days but it can randomly reignite.

https://youtu.be/lF-ubRP2ihc

The last part felt a little mean-spirited in retrospect. But my intention was to point out that you're just describing a lack of infrastructure yet

Once we build this stuff it's *there for use* and just has the usual burdens of maintenance. Arguably less since we don't need to transport big trucks full of oil to it regularly

Not everyone wants to bleed so they can be on the bleeding edge.

https://supercharge.info/map

If you were talking about LA to La Paz then there is a real concern about making it, but LA to LV is no problem at all.

I'm sure under normal conditions, 270 miles would be cutting it pretty close, if it even makes it there at all. Luckily there are 10 supercharges along the way.

Not sure how it is for non-teslas, but I'm guessing at least a few of those places with superchargers also have chargers that will work with other kinds of cars.

I love electric cars. I’ve been drawing pictures of them thinking about them and waiting for them for a long time. And, I am very grateful for those that made them a reality. That said, I’m also pragmatic. Where we are today versus where we need to be to make them practical for a large portion of the population is sublime.

That makes around 4k can be charged on route, more realistic it's above 10k already.. and that's only Tesla.

Growing pains happen, but I drove my M3 across EU multiple times.. and needed to wait for a charger once, for 3 minutes.

No issues whatsoever.

https://ibb.co/b6N7bdp

> Sodium is 10 times faster to charge than lithium, and safer because of its low operating temperature. The number of recharging cycles is up to 5 times greater than lithium. Another advantage is that sodium is more widely available and accessible on the planet, and its processing has less impact on the environment.

https://web.archive.org/web/20231121142300/https://www.leroy...

Silly me for expecting that, I guess.

Sodium ferrocyanide ("Prussian white") was claimed by CATL as well, though they have been supplementing it with lithium in cars for some reason. The cynic in me thinks that the lithium is there to stabilize unfavorable cycling characteristics of the sodium; the optimist hopes it is just because lithium is cheaper at scale right now.

Sadly I can’t find any teardown of the product, it’s all just press reprints.

There’s a split view PDF (in the documents section), it doesn’t seem to show the battery but does not show a huge amount of space for it.

https://chemistry-europe.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10....

I can imagine a lot of the weight of the battery unit itself isn't necessarily the battery, if that makes sense.

Intensity(Ah) Less than 1.5

Tension (V) 3.6

Amperage (Ah) 0.7

Edit : the box indicate 0.33 Kg, the 0.5 weight probably include the charger and other parts.

Wikipedia has a comparison table at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium-ion_battery#Comparison but no idea how accurate/up to date it is.

Lithium batteries aren't made of lithium. They're made of nickel- or iron, or manganese, or cobalt. In iron and manganese batteries the #1 price factor is the manufacturing- the energy, solvents, and machinery used to deposit materials onto film.

Likewise sodium batteries are not made of sodium. There's 13x more iron in them than sodium. There may also be large amounts of manganese or vanadium. The cost of manufacturing is also higher per kWh.

It will take time to mass produce things regardless, but I imagine Sodium has far fewer bottlenecks.

It's great if we can get a chemistry that avoids the need for lithium, but it won't be a showstopper if we don't.

Like with every commodity market.

Industrial Sodium is made with electrolysis of sea salt; the factory is next to the Gulf of Bothany and has abundant (wind and hydro) power, so the other material supply is safe.

It wasn’t hard anywhere, but it’s straightforward in that particular case.

Iron is on top. Lithium is one up from the bottom left.

Calcium is, but maybe because it's not processed as most metals it is not included in the graph

https://salt-partners.com/pdf/Santorini2006Paper.pdf

For context, as of 2019, we produced enough of this "brine" to cover Florida with 30 centimeters of brine every year. That means, as a whole, desalination plants actually produce even more toxic wastewater than they do clean drinking water.

As a result figuring out ways we could utilize this _product_ ("byproduct" feels like the wrong term here considering it's the primary thing produced) is a major area of interest

Can you cite your claim?

Go from the super high salinity brine through to crude salt, then chloralkali process to get sodium (which can be cleaned up) and chlorine gas (industrially useful).

Mined salt is probably more valuable as table salt (and cattle feed) than as source of metallic Na

Now if you look at how larger stars operate (the CNO cycle [1]) you’ll see that it matches up with the higher relative abundance of carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen in the universe. Lithium, beryllium, and boron get “skipped over” in a sense.

Furthermore, if you look at a graph of the relative abundance of all elements, you’ll note that odd-numbered elements are less abundant than even (with the exceptions of hydrogen and beryllium). This is called the Oddo-Harkins rule [2] and it may also be playing a role.

Edit: I should also add that the third major process in stars, triple-α [3], involves the fusion of three helium-4 nuclei into one carbon-12 nucleus. This occurs in older stars that have exhausted most of their hydrogen fuel and so have built up a large core of “inert” helium. When their outward pressure from hydrogen fusion is no longer high enough to withstand gravity, they reach the much higher pressures and temperatures needed for triple-α fusion. Unfortunately for the lithium industry, there’s no chance of producing lithium this way since it is skipped over on the way to carbon.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNO_cycle

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oddo%E2%80%93Harkins_rule

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple-alpha_process

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_lithium_problem

There is also a lot less Lithium in the universe than our models predict:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_lithium_problem

"BBC Science Focus wrote in 2023 that "recent research seems to completely discount" such theories; the magazine held that mainstream lithium nucleosynthesis calculations are probably correct."

I am unconvinced.

You cannot estimate abundance by atomic number like that. The big bang produced mostly hydrogen and helium, with traces of lithium and beryllium. The elements heavier than that are mostly produced by stars, and the physics of fusion have a massive impact on what elements, specifically, get made. Free protons join together to become helium-4 much more readily than any other fusion process, meaning that by the time heavier things start forming, the raw material is entirely ⁴He.

This means that things that are easily made of ⁴He are dramatically more common than anything else, making the most common isotopes after ⁴He oxygen-16 (4 alphas), carbon-12 (3 alphas, less common than oxygen because it's less stable and easily picks up another alpha), neon-20 (5 alphas), and iron-56 (14 alphas to nickel-56 which immediately decays twice through β+ to produce ⁵⁶Fe). Iron is so high up above all the other intermediate steps, because it's the last stop: In heavy enough stars, the entire core converts to iron, and reactions past that are energy-consuming, not energy-producing, so after that the star collapses.

Lithium is not on any of the major stellar nucleosynthesis pathways, which means it's only produced by exceptional processes, making it roughly as universally abundant as the other stuff that is made by exceptional processes, like scandium or gallium or zirconium. But none of that matters, because:

Lithium is abundant and easy to extract in the earth's crust.

While there's not that much of it up there, there's plenty easy to extract down here, because it's so light and likes forming light compounds, meaning that a huge proportion of all the lithium of all the rocks that came together to form the earth is reachable to us. Lithium is not rare. Any statement about lithium batteries that bemoans the scarcity of lithium is doubly confused: Firstly, because lithium is simply not scarce. Secondly, because lithium is such a tiny portion of the battery, that despite being in the name, only a small fraction of the materials cost is lithium.

Lithium price has had a few big spikes because mining is a very high-capital industry where spinning up projects is measured in years, if not decades, and we suddenly started using a lot more lithium in ~2010. Accordingly, the price has spiked from the ~$5k per ton (which is roughly in the same ballpark typical cost of extraction, where any abundant mineral prices end up at), to the heights of $37k per ton last year. Even at this high price, lithium was not even the most expensive material component in most lithium batteries, because typically only 1-3% of the battery's weight is lithium.

But these prices won't last, because having the price of a commodity so high above the cost of extraction means that new mining projects are spinning up.

USGS (2021):

    Five mineral operations in Australia, two brine operations each in Argentina and Chile, and two brine and one mineral operation in China accounted for the majority of world lithium production.

    Owing to overproduction and decreased prices, several established lithium operations postponed capacity expansion plans. Junior mining operations in Australia and Canada ceased production altogether.

    Six mineral operations in Australia, one mineral tailings operation in Brazil, two brine operations each in Argentina and Chile, and three mineral and two brine operations in China accounted for the majority of world lithium production.

    Additionally, smaller operations in Brazil, Canada, China, Portugal, the United States, and Zimbabwe also contributed to world lithium production.

    Owing to the rapid increase in demand and prices of lithium in 2022, established lithium operations worldwide increased or were in the process of increasing production capacity.     

* https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2021/mcs2021-lithium.pd...

* https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2023/mcs2023.pdf

Bonus British Geo. Soc. Global Li Map: https://www2.bgs.ac.uk/mineralsuk/download/global_critical_m...

    Lithium supply security has become a top priority for technology companies in Asia, Europe, and North America. Strategic alliances and joint ventures among technology companies and exploration companies continued to be established to ensure a reliable, diversified supply of lithium for battery suppliers and vehicle manufacturers. Brine-based lithium sources were in various stages of development or exploration in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, China, and the United States; mineral-based lithium sources were in various stages of development or exploration in Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, China, Congo (Kinshasa), Czechia, Ethiopia, Finland, Germany, Ghana, Kazakhstan, Mali, Namibia, Nigeria, Peru, Portugal, Russia, Serbia, Spain, Thailand, the United States, and Zimbabwe; lithium-clay sources were in various stages of development or exploration in Mexico and the United States.

If you want to go in depth, though, you can always hit:

https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/campaigns/met...

> because lithium is such a tiny portion of the battery

Is this why recycling it is so difficult?

Lithium production capacity is scarce however, since it’s a mostly useless element unless you’re building batteries out of it.

Anyway, once cities realize that they need to stop taking water from rivers, we should be able to skim quite a bit of lithium from desalination plant waste water.

Well you do?

It won't work as long as there's a roughly equal alternative that's cheaper/easier to produce. Free market will win here.

There's no way one state can force another state (aside from war) to manufacture something a particular way. It's like if I controlled the world's timber supply and said Canada must produce houses out of timber and not, say, concrete. Canada's gonna go produce using concrete unless I somehow make my timber price competitive.

Think batteries and nuclear fusion.

Extremely hard stuff, not easy to pick apples.

State actors can absolutely influence the fields for decades by choosing to fund certain approaches that lend themseves to centralisation.

This is quite naive - in fact we do this all the time

* IMF provides loans to developing countries on the condition that they dont have 'socialist' policies

* EU bailouts for Greece/aspain/etc. was given on the condition of sale of state assets and doing other things

* The worlds ship insurance industry is run in London. Nuclear powered contsiner ships are faster, cheaper, and better in every way. Good luck insuring them. Running them without insurance is. illegal

*'non-tariff barriers' - i.e. free trade negotiations - are all about aligning countries on how they manufacture/insure/regulate things like cars. Guess which econony gets the bigger say.

Russia was forced to adopt Eu standards for petrol quality and engine emissions standards in 2,000's and they still follow

Same goes with the EU bailouts, but PIGS countries were already in a compact with the rest of the Eurozone. Not to mention, that governments should not own things that can go bust and drag a budget under water.

As shown lately with Russian oil sales - it's absolutely possible to insure ships somewhere else, other than Lloyd's of London.

Because these 'socialist' policies are usually the reason why these countries need IMF loans.

This announcement is about an improvement in energy density made possible by $Bs being invested to allow sodium batteries to become more competitive with lithium.

There are also other battery chemistries being rolled out. Iron based ones seem particularly promising for stationary storage.

OP made it sound like the Evil Corporate Overlords are conspiring to hold us back from achieving battery freedumb.

Conspiracies are just common sense for a group of people; but that's exactly my point. A group doesn't have to meet at night by the torch light in black robes and decide upon secretive actions to further their own interests.

Any country without an expeditionary military force (about 187 of them) likes the resources they have. Ab abundant is great unless you have a known military adversary with extra-territorial ambition (that’s three countries).

Think about it :)

[0]https://www.hks.harvard.edu/publications/true-cost-iraq-war-...

[1]https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?end=2001...

But let me flip your argument -- why did the US invade Iraq?

The US has/had troops stationed in Saudi Arabia and Saudi Arabia was in the US's pocket at that time (it might have reversed since then).

The US often does stuff that costs taxpayers trillions so that the people bribing congress can make billions.

PFAS, Canadian lumber sanctions and oxycontin are three recent examples.

Any links I can read about this? I'm open to the idea that suppressing Iraq's oil industry was the main objective of the war. I don't like claims about "the US's quest to take other nations oil" being that it never happened either in Iraq or even Iran. At least when I ask for a source I can never get one. To me the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were mainly about projecting power, not oil. Certainly not Afghanistan because there is little to no oil there in the first place. Even regarding Iraq it is OPEC that sets the price and I doubt they would let Iraq greatly reduce the market price. It would have to be as you say: people with connections using the US's power to suppress competition. Many people online, however, seem to have the idea that US foriegn policy dictates collecting oil and that the US is stealing trillions of dollars of oil from various third world countries. I think the US gains a lot more from war to project power. Iraq for the most part today is a US ally. And if we are looking for people who would gain from the war it would more likely be Lockheed than Exxon. Lastly, there is no reason to say that US oil companies staged the war exclusively. It is possible that eg. SA were also involved or the main initiators.

Removal of Saddam removed one of the biggest adversaries of Iran. Now Iranian Revolutionary Guard can freely move from Tehran to Beirut and support the rebels in Yemen.

Lipo can be 200+ /kg density and Li Ion can be 250+ in current, commercially produced, generations of battery cells.

I'm not a pro so anyone feel free to correct me.

This is an article about the Northvolt news by a German journalist specialized on battery technology (in German): https://www.golem.de/news/akkutechnik-northvolt-und-altris-e...

He says that 160 Wh/kg is in the ballpark of LFP batteries from five years ago. It is, however, about the same as the sodium batteries announced by CATL in 2021.

Frank Wunderlich-Pfeiffer should consider writing in english, I love his expertise and clarity of writing.

The current market need for large local battery store for EV chargers is apparently one of the limiting factors in deploying new chargers, delivering spot excess demand can be provided by either onsite diesel generators (like some rest areas in California are doing now) or a battery bank. The latter is preferable for energy efficiency and maintenance reasons.

Their competitive argument is a fast charging time with a low impact on the life the battery pack, with a full charge under 10 minutes and about 2'000 cycles. They also have a good available power and capacity at 20C discharge rates.

Lithium is worth about $40k per tonne, or $40 per kg. A Tesla power wall 2 is about 150kg, if half of that is lithium, then the lithium alone is worth $2.3k. Powerball costs about $9.5k, so the lithium is a fair portion of the cost.

https://www.thisoldhouse.com/solar-alternative-energy/review...

https://www.statista.com/statistics/606350/battery-grade-lit...

Note, I know raw lithium carbonate is not stuck directly into a battery, just spitballing with the little bit of learning I just did.

Some articles, if you are interested:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09626... https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy-environment/news/fac...

It's not even comparable to sodium, which is abundant practically everywhere.

The amount you need for driving a car for 3 years is several kg vs tonnes. And you can recycle the battery but you can't recycle the oil you burned.

That's why I'm not particularly harsh on lithium externalities. Let's get the low-hanging fruits first before we focus on nuances.

This estimate is very far off.

1% is closer.

When you think of an application like grid connected energy storage, most of those performance metrics are irrelevant, and the only thing that really matters is cell cost per total energy stored and delivered during its lifetime. We will likely see something over-engineered and simplified to maximize cycle count and minimize cost, leading to a much larger raw material consumption, at the expense of density - the cell is not going anywhere.

So the ability to use dirty cheap ingredients is a game changer for the grid storage market.

The CIA wants to know your location /s . I know this kind of joke is not appreciated on HN (for good reason), but one has to ponder of the implication of cheap/dense energy/storage and what big actors like governments, big corporations would think about not being able to effectively control energy production/storage/distribution.

The USA doesn't care if there's Xium inside the USA.

Xium just has to be in a few places and it has to be moved across the globe, transacted in USD and guarded by the US Navy.

Big corporations will not invest if they can't create a moat.

an order of magnitude less. 30KWh is just about 3kg of lithium in theory. On practice it would be about 7-10% of the weight of the battery.

For now. But more importantly, there are sovereignty problems to considered in case things get worse in the future. And the quality and usability of the lithium substrate varies quite a bit between suppliers, with the better ones, for now, coming from the less "attractive" suppliers.

So at the PACK level of energy density, which is really all that matters, sodium ion and LFP close much of the gap with nickel-cobalt.

So spitballing here, an NMC chemistry at 240 wk/kg at the CELL level will lose about 20+% ore of density per weight for cooling and safety, so that they will be effectively 160 wh/kg at the PACK level.

Most CATL literature has LFP and sodium ion at 90-95% at the pack level with "cell-to-pack" which bypasses modules and other intermediate packaging.

So if 240 wh/kg NMC chemistry is actually 160 wh/kg at PACK level, and this sodium ion is 160 wh/kg but about 150 wh/kg at PACK level, well then you see the real power of these chemistries.

If the pack level 160-180 wh/kg equates to a 400 mile car, then 140-160 wh/kg sodium ion at pack level equates to a 300+ mile car.

300 miles means a really good city car. It means you can probably do a 50-100 mile PHEV car pretty cheap. It means cheap, limit-is-number-of-factories scaling of EV battery supply.

Sodium ion is supposed to be 40$ or less bill of materials per kw-hr compared to 80-100 for NMC and about 50-70 for LFP. And it should probably drop from there in the long run.

It also means that EVs beat ICEs on drivetrain cost, possibly by a significant margin, which might translate to a 4000$ + price difference from an ICE. Combined with theoretically cheaper maintenance and "fuel" costs, this should translate to an EV cost advantage that people simply won't be able to overlook.

Personally I think there should be an overall "carbon externality charge" of $5000 on a new ICE as well, or something that scales with the carbon inefficiency of the vehicle (so a bigass suburban assault vehicle is like $10000).

Also, note that the roadmap for batteries of CATL, a lot like the roadmap for future nodes in semiconductors so take it with a grain of salt as to when they realize the goals, is for 200 wh/kg sodium ion and 240-260 wh/kg LFP. With superior cell-to-pack density, that should mean a 400 mile car for sodium ion, and a 500 mile car for LFP.

Now, hopefully in 5-10 years we get lithium-sulfur and sodium-sulfur that are AT LEAST 50% more dense with similar materials costs. Then you get to shrink the battery to make the EV even cheaper.

So the revolution is coming, in my opinion. And this isn't just a gee-whiz a faster pc for my Overwatch. This is "future survival of humanity in the balance". We NEED to decarbonize transportation, and we NEED cheap batteries for alternative energy grid storage. The development of these technologies is preservation-of-humanity level of importance, and high density sodium ion chemistries are a major major step towards that because of all the economic and practical levels/needs/requirements they meet/exceed.

Your whole writeup was inspiring and gives me more hope for the future. This part, though, I'm angry about. I'm angry that we don't already have this legislation in some form. I'm sure it will be fought tooth & nail by the big auto manufacturers, but we should do it anyway. Maybe we could tack on higher penalties for anyone caught 'rolling coal', too.

Low efficiency vehicles are taxed on import, and the money raised is returned as rebates on high efficiency vehicles.

A Ford Ranger might attract the full fee, a new t Nissan leaf would get the full credit. A small ICE car attracts a smaller fee. Hybrids are given a smaller credit.

The exact amount of credit varied over time as the fees gathered changed.

Even here in ostensibly progressive Europe, populist parties are riding on "Cheap gas!!!".

> So the revolution is coming, in my opinion.

Yes and: The nascent thermal batteries (box of hot rocks) and advanced geothermal power generation are just now crossing the chasm.

Both tech stacks have been proven, have financing, and initial customers.

And now they're jumping on to the cost learning curve.

Roughly, thermal tech today is where solar and batteries were in the 2000s.

The will be huge because 1/2 of energy consumption ends up as heat. So skip all the middle steps.

This is huge. HUGE.

China dominates the graphite market and now has export controls.

IIRC, most current Li and Sodium batteries use graphite anodes of some kind. Northvote's use of hard carbon may prove to be an amazing cost and derisking advantage.

I know nothing about their novel Prussian White cathode.

I eagerly await the expert analysis of Northvote's anode and cathode.

The interesting number for stationary storage is, Wh per $. I wonder where how they compare on that (relevant) measure?

I haven't seen it that cheap yet, its got new tech prices at the moment for cells on aliexpress.

LiPho? Are you thinking of LiFePO4, aka LFP?

---

but honestly, what's the deal with same-y headlines about batteries? can we have articles that actually keep observing these technologies as they progress after being invented?

It's not widely touted since the density is not as good, the Northvolt announcement notwithstanding. But the costs apparently are much lower.

This can of course mean that this is a game changer for stationary storage, because density is not as much a concern.

Thank you for your submission of proposed new revolutionary battery technology. Your new technology claims to be superior to existing lithium-ion technology and is just around the corner from taking over the world. Unfortunately your technology will likely fail, because:

[ ] it is impractical to manufacture at scale.

[ ] it will be too expensive for users.

[ ] it suffers from too few recharge cycles.

[ ] it is incapable of delivering current at sufficient levels.

[ ] it lacks thermal stability at low or high temperatures.

[ ] it lacks the energy density to make it sufficiently portable.

[ ] it has too short of a lifetime.

[ ] its charge rate is too slow.

[ ] its materials are too toxic.

[ ] it is too likely to catch fire or explode.

[ ] it is too minimal of a step forward for anybody to care.

[ ] this was already done 20 years ago and didn't work then.

[ ] by the time it ships li-ion advances will match it.

EDIT: actually I just realized I'm describing Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium-ion_battery#Comparison

I've also seen manufacturers who make 3V or 3.2V cells in AA format, and then supply a dummy AA-shaped link with it, which is just a straight-through connection like a wire. Put one cell and one link in your tool, or two cells and two links.

Can't find on Amazon. Care to share or make a photo please?

In the case of bulbs you could get a better form factor, but no one's doing that, they're just using non replaceable bulbs.

Batteries. Are you going to get rid of your TV just so you can use a different battery chemistry? There have been various chemistries available in AA. Would you rather we have even more battery sizes to keep track of?

B/c the LEDs require a driver which runs on DC [the better case is constant driven], the space constraints are too high and there is not enough room for heat dissipation which in the US kills the driver (as running on 110/120AC is less efficient), and in Europe it tends to kill the LEDs because they get to be overdriven, but the driver dissipates less heat. The power factor on all them tends to be atrocious, usually 0.5phi. They tend to quite noisy, esp. when it comes to EMF. In short there is not enough space to have a decent LED driver along with enough space for heat dissipation for the LEDs (usually only 15%, being generous, of the energy will be emitted as light. The rest is heat, so if you see 8W of LED, more than 6.5W is just heat)

Pretty much almost all LEDs you can buy in a retrofit case are almost guaranteed to be overdirven to show better numbers and be 'brighter'. Near ceiling larger fixtures can be designed for LEDs. They tend to have an actual 15-30k hours lifespan.

Dimming the LEDs is the next atrocity, esp. when it comes to chopping the sine wave. The LED dirvers have to work with the chopped sine wave and detect how much it has been chopped to reduce the current or the PWM.

About the AA(A) and the TV. I can control the TV w/ bluetooth and an app but I find that incovenient. However NiMH nominal voltage is 1.2V which fits the 1.5 of the alkaline batteries. It's good enough already. So yes, it takes different chemistry unless the remote controls provide built-in step-up/step-down converters, effectively variable operational voltage.

And besides, making everyone change every fixture in their house in order to take advantage of LED would just have meant it never happened. E26/E27 bulbs are going to be around for a while.

Just lots of LEDs in series with higher target forward voltage. Still, LEDs are current driven devices and quite temperature sensitive, and still need a driver. The issues are not that different.

>That's pretty close to the holy grail IMO.

I guess we have a very different idea about the grail, then.

The first LEDs I got were metal bodied.

One of them has gone in the past 10 years. So they must be around that lower bound by now.

Tbf I don't think subsequent ones have been too bad.

Re your TV. Ok your TV might be, my TV isn't, and I have plenty of other remotes, and then there's clocks and weighing scales and kids toys and all the other things that use aa batteries.

The heavier the better when it comes to such LEDs. Yes, it's possible to make them work okayish, and control the temps (LEDs should not go over 60C) but that would show poor lumens (and watts) on the box, and be expensive.

Review here https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1c34y1N7NU/

Since batteries involve the migration of ions between electrodes, the much larger size of sodium ions means that the resulting batteries will be both less dense and have less charge cycles than their lithium counterparts, due to the higher volumetric electrode deformation during charging.

This makes them suboptimal for both grid and mobile applications, and the only use case I can see for them is making very cheap disposable stuff, which does not bode well for the environment.

Downsides: somewhat low energy density, somewhat less efficient.

CATL has been producing sodium ion batteries for some time. I think most of those so far end up in cheap Chinese EVs. Relatively few of those have found their way to the European or North American markets yet. Part of the reason is probably the lack of sodium ion battery factories outside of China (so far). It looks like Northvolt is looking to change that.

It's competing with LFP and other battery chemistries. You'd use these mainly for cheap cars and possibly for grid storage.

Charging a lithium battery that is below freezing destroys the battery.

Per a 2023 Nature article: https://www.nature.com/articles/s43017-022-00387-5

> The locations of suitable continental brines are also geographically restricted, with an estimated 50–85% of lithium-rich continental brine deposits located in the Lithium Triangle and with China as the next richest source. Hard-rock ores are also geographically concentrated in Australia and China

Lithium in a form that is economical to mine/process is indeed quite rare. Which is why 3 countries produce 90% of it.

And it is extremely environmentally costly which is treated as an economic externality. It takes 1.9m litres to mine one ton of lithium and solvent chemicals like hydrochloric acid contaminates groundwater, making the entire site toxic and unlivable.

Entire governments have been overthrown for access to this resource.

Here's how much of everything we mined in 2022. Lithium is bottom left corner just above Gold.

https://www.iea.org/reports/global-ev-outlook-2023/trends-in...

And yes Sodium is fine for most applications where it can be a little heavier (grid uses, maybe cars) which is where most of it is projected to be needed.

[0]: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/2019/summary/

The rest of the power train, suspension, frame, etc matter more these days.