Sodium-ion batteries have started to appear in cars and home storage

I skimmed through the article. It talks a lot about sodium ion batteries and how major vehicle and transportation companies are getting into making and using these batteries. It also talks about the cost aspect, with sodium ion being cheaper than lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries.

However, there is no mention of this technology in consumer devices and gadgets like laptops, smartphones and tablets. I get that the site is about clean technology as a replacement for the currently more polluting technology. But I’m interested to see when these sodium ion batteries will appear in phones and laptops and what difference they may make to the cost, price, weight, performance, safety, longevity, etc.

Well, because they probably never will.

Phones and laptops are weight/volume sensitive, and sodium ions are a lot larger than lithium ions, thus the battery energy density is lower.

Increased usage of Sodium batteries for static applications (home storage) could reduce demand for Li based batteries. This could reduce the cost of Laptop batteries.

Phone and laptop batteries probably make up a tiny fraction of the battery market. My EV battery is almost 5000 times the size of my iphone.

Sodium batteries, if the technology works, would replace EV batteries and provide support to the electrical grid, and would be purchased at thousands of times the volume of iphone ad laptop batteries

As another comment mentioned, sodium ion batteries compete very poorly against lithium when portability is paramount.

But more on that point, it always struck me as bizarre that lithium was dominant in so many areas despite vastly different requirements. For home and grid storage, battery weight is almost immaterial, while it's a paramount concern in portable devices. I think it would be very surprising indeed if one chemistry performed best in all scenarios. Lithium became dominant primarily because it had so much research and supply chain maturity behind it, even if it was suboptimal for areas like grid storage. Glad to see other battery chemistries are getting more investment.

the point of sodium batteries is that for stationary applications (e.g. ups/house backup), we've been using scaled up cell phone batteries for the last decade because the tech space was doing all the r&d. now that we know how good batteries can be, every important niche is getting it's own billions of dollars spent to find the perfect battery for that application

Lots of laptops and tablet models could spare more volume and weight for batteries if there was a big cost advantage.

I doubt that could happen. The price is so low that it doesn't make a difference unless your sodium costs negative dollars.

I would say the bulk price of lithium ion batteries is the most you could possibly remove via materials changes. When smaller batteries are more expensive, that's based on factors that would also affect other chemistries. And the bulk price for laptop capacity, 50-99 watt hours, is $5-10 and dropping.

Since their energy density is still lower, it will probably take a while for them to be adapted in EVs.

But their impact on energy storage to stabilize the grid, both technically and in terms of prices, can not be overstated. Cheap, safe storage is the key component missing in Europe for using more renewables. Without that you need to keep gas plants in reserve, should there be a few days without sun and wind.

There were a few such days in December 2024, and their impact onto energy prices is difficult for energy-intense industries. https://energy-charts.info/charts/price_average/chart.htm?l=...

> for stationary applications (e.g. ups/house backup), we've been using scaled up cell phone batteries for the last decade

That's just the old Powerwall. Most home backup batteries for the last 5 years have been LFP, not Li-ion. I think even Tesla uses LFP in Powerwalls now.

More likely to do the opposite as economies of scale decrease for lithium - though rapidly advancing battery technology and scale in general means I'd be shocked if it ever managed to do the opposite enough to increase prices and not just slow the decline in prices.

I bet we (well, China, at least) will see some lower range but cheaper EVs using sodium batteries pretty much right away. A lot of people would be fine with having something that can only do 100 miles as their daily commute vehicle as long as it was cheap, especially in 2 vehicle families.

You may see a mixture of sodium and lithium batteries in grid storage; one for providing very short-term grid stabilization of the order of seconds to minutes, the other for long-term large-scale storage, which is by far the largest application. Possibly both within the same battery farm.

Opportunity is for (stationary) appliances, rather than devices.

For instance startup Channing Street Copper's battery powered induction stove. Their battery is large enough to also power your refrigerator for 3 days (IIRC).

In effect, a combination Powerwall and stove. Without requiring a panel upgrade. Apartment dwellers can cost effectively electrify All The Things. It greatly improves resiliency. Unlocks distributed grid power generation and storage (IIRC something like "VPP" for "virtual power plant").

"Induction stoves with batteries built in, and why they matter" [2022]

https://www.volts.wtf/p/induction-stoves-with-batteries-buil...

On the other hand the bill of materials of many gadgets is really low while having tight margins. If there are two $100 tablets on the market and the other can advertise a 30% longer runtime weighing 15% more at the same cost, it could be a differentiator.

that's fair. in the past 5 years or so, we've been using scaled up car batteries instead of scaled up cell phone batteries which is a lot better, but still imperfect