I agree, and thank you for pointing out how sodium would appear so similar to lithium in it's charge/discharge profile.
Sodium is far more plentiful and easy to obtain than lithium.
We may be facing a future in which we have actually good batteries with better capacity, far greater life expectancy, and just a better storage system all around.
A lot of my concerns about Electric Vehicles may be suddenly getting addressed and resolved.
Of course we still have "the government controlling them" problem, which won't be resolved through chemistry.
“We may be facing a future in which we have actually good batteries with better capacity, far greater life expectancy, and just a better storage system all around.”
Perfect is the sworn enemy of good enough.
We have LFP tech it can do 10000 cycles to 80% SOH at 160-200wh/kg and it doesn’t have flammable electrolytes in most LFP types. Case in point BYD Bladepack passed the steel spike test didn’t burn barely heated up.
BYD just released their 14.5 megawatt hour 20ft iso sized power bank. It has a LCOS of 1.4 cents per kWh round trip and lasts 10000 cycles. If we didn’t have tariffs that pack would be dominating the power storage and back our market. It could run a full sized Costco for 14 hours alone off a single parking spot sized area. Game changer hands down.
CATL has sodium ion cells that do 10,000 very fast 5C cycles and 50000+ 1C cycles with a full operating range of -40 to 70C no cooling or heating needed at either extreme those cells only lose 10% of capacity and that comes back when you get back to the middle of the temp range. Here again these cells cannot burn they use an aqueous electrolyte completely non-flammable the sodium is an ion form it can no more burn than table salt can we have the near perfect batteries already it’s ever increasing energy density that drives the push for battery development going from 180 or 200 to 400e.g./kg makes a large difference.