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

(cleantechnica.com)
160 points xbmcuser | 2 comments | 23 Oct 25 01:36 UTC | HN request time: 0.415s | source
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AnonC ◴[23 Oct 25 04:03 UTC] No.45678061[source]▶
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.

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chris_va ◴[23 Oct 25 04:19 UTC] No.45678134[source]▶
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.

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1. someonenice ◴[23 Oct 25 04:21 UTC] No.45678145[source]▶
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.
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2. gpm ◴[23 Oct 25 06:19 UTC] No.45678764[source]▶
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.