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

(cleantechnica.com)
160 points xbmcuser | 3 comments | 23 Oct 25 01:36 UTC | HN request time: 0.206s | source
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hoistbypetard ◴[23 Oct 25 03:55 UTC] No.45678022[source]▶
I hope it's on the way, but I don't think the Pioneer Na is yet a sign of this revolution. This detailed review didn't leave me in a hurry to go get one, anyway:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoZ_g_MShTw

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jxf ◴[23 Oct 25 05:29 UTC] No.45678437[source]▶
The idea with really cheap batteries is that they don't need good energy density. You just swap them every so often and put the one you aren't using in the charging rack. You could even carry your own reserve energy with you!
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TrainedMonkey ◴[23 Oct 25 06:02 UTC] No.45678639[source]▶
We used to have swappable batteries in virtually all of portable electronics. You could even get them in a rechargeable accumulator format. Virtually all of portable electronics has integrated batteries.
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Gigachad ◴[23 Oct 25 06:07 UTC] No.45678687[source]▶
Yeah but AAs suck, and the newer more advanced batteries all have different voltages and require different charge circuitries so it’s hard to create a new standard for them.
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1. theodric ◴[23 Oct 25 07:36 UTC] No.45679234[source]▶
Li-ion cells are available in AA- and AAA-scaled sizes, e.g. 14500, 10440, plus fractional sizes that can be shorter or longer for the same diameter. If we wanted to not glue batteries into devices, we very well could, but that would make it harder to force purchase of a new device when the consumable component inside it fails.
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2. comboy ◴[23 Oct 25 07:57 UTC] No.45679372[source]▶
I think very few manufacturers are optimizing for that. The move to integrated batteries for most portable electronics happened when the price of the battery plus charging ICs became lower than putting in a battery holder. Doing battery holder is currently simply more expensive, design is more complex putting it together is more complex. The cost are not intuitive, you can get 10+ microcontrollers for a price of a single physical on-off switch.
3. Dylan16807 ◴[23 Oct 25 08:14 UTC] No.45679451[source]▶
I agree that we could use standardized lithium-or-similar batteries in a ton of devices.

But please don't exactly match AA/AAA sizes. That will cause much more harm than good.