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The east German town at the centre of the new ‘gold rush’ … for lithium
(www.theguardian.com)
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What's with the rumors (?) about sodium batteries? When they work and are much cheaper, who needs lithium in the foreseeable future?
Their theoretical energy density are half of what lithium achieves. While their price and ecology probably makes sense in some cases, good luck marketing an ev with half the range, or a cellphone that lasts half a day.
Afaik, there are many experiments and ventures on energy storage, like natrium, Solid State etc. But at the moment they aren't vialable for commercial, technical or production reasons . Lithium as an element has unique storage & cycle properties, as I understand it. You need more energy and space for natrium battery in cars, which won't make them usable for now.
Then again, tomorrow may come a breakthrough, but this is what we've been hearing for many years. So it seems they will stick with lithium.
BYD demosntrated the BYD Seagull using a natrium battery. It is certainly not completly crazy to use it.
We have a lot of experience with Lithium in production, we have close to zero experience with other battery technologies.
It took Lithium 15-20 years to get from research to large scale use in cars, so you can expect the same for other technologies