And -40°F!

Since lithium prices crashed, sodium batteries' main advantage of being cheaper has vanished.

They're also lower capacity for the same weight.

The best application is where cold might be an issue, and weight isn't. So, for large storage. Or, where cold is always an issue, such as in the Arctic.

175Wh is within striking distance of LFPs. That's really promising if they can start mass producing them for EVs

Never mind vehicles, I want a slightly unreasonable number of those batteries for my house. At those sorts of prices you stop having to work out your energy budget to spec batteries, just approximate it, double it, and call it good.

It’s the performant at -40 that intrigues me. In Canada, there are many regions where an electric vehicle just isn’t viable. If you need to drive to a rural area in the middle of January, good luck. A frozen lithium battery makes either for a long trip with multiple recharges, or not working entirely.

A new battery that can withstand the cold would definitely convince some anti-EV folks around here.

I'm not sure I believe they've gotten anywhere close to anger yet.

I'm excited for all new battery tech, we will drag people kicking and screaming into a safer less polluting future.

It's thing like this that make unsure when to pull the EV trigger.

I'm currently shopping for a used EV, 2022 and newer, but I'm not sure if I should wait a couple more years and let the tech keep developing.

The energy density is still quite low. These appear to be for short city transport, especially with such a small capacity. Sodium promises even higher energy density than current NCA, so these batteries are very early in their R&D journey. Still, cool to finally see real world use of sodium batteries. Once we start seeing batteries with real world range of 1,000km+, I think we see mass adoption of EVs. It would eliminate the last major roadblock for most consumers: range anxiety.

I love seeing new battery tech but that doesn’t mean I’m going to buy an electric car.