Out the gate, sodium ion advantages are so significant that unless there is some surprise show-stopper it will likely become the dominant energy storage medium.
Crustal abundance up to 1000x that of lithium - pretty much every nation has effectively unlimited supply, it's no longer a barrier or a geographically limited resource like lithium.
No significant damage going down to 0V, can even be stored at 0V - much safer than lithium which gets excitable once out of its prefered voltage range.
Cold weather performance down to -30C - northern latitude users don't have as much range anxiety in the winter.
Basically, the only problem I see is that companies that have made significant long-term investments in lithium could take a big hit. Countries that banked on their lithium reserves as a key future resource for will have to adjust their strategy.
Lithium batteries will likely still have a place in the high performance realm but but for the majority of run-of-the-mill applications - everything from customer electronics to EVs to offgrid storage - it's hard to see how sodium-ion wouldn't quickly replace it.
Energy density matters a lot for many applications, including customer electroncs and EVs. Sodium ion is at a fundamental disadvantage (sodium is heavier than lithium).
I don't doubt that sodium ion has a place... but whether it takes over as the dominant battery type for portable applications strikes me as very dependent on the future of lithium extraction. It seems like a place that has a lot of room to grow more efficient and thus more competitive on cost.
No mention of degradation as a result of recharge cycles. So many of my electronic devices have had to be disposed of because the battery would no longer hold a charge. This is also a big factor in EVs and their loss of value over time.
It is a big issue only for the ignorant (which is great for those that buy used). EV batteries are warranted for 60%-70% of capacity at eight years, which means most manufacturers expect batteries to do better, and actual real world experience shows much better.
It is impossible for sodium-ion batteries to reach the same energy density as the best lithium-ion batteries.
So lithium-ion batteries will never be replaced in smartphones or laptops by sodium-ion batteries.
But there are plenty of applications where the energy density of sodium-ion batteries is sufficient. Eventually sodium-ion batteries will be much cheaper and this is why they will replace lithium-ion batteries in all cheap cars and for most stationary energy storage (except when lower auto-discharge is desired).
For the same amount of stored energy, one needs a triple mass of sodium vs. lithium.
However, sodium-ion batteries and lithium-ion batteries do not have metal electrodes (because for now it is not known how to ensure that those will survive an acceptable number of cycles), so the actual mass and volume of the electrodes are significantly greater than that of the sodium or lithium that is used.
Because of that, the difference in energy densities is much lower than the mass ratio seems to imply.
The parent article claims that the energy density of the Na-ion batteries is in the same range with that of the LFP batteries (i.e. lower than that of the Li-ion batteries with Ni or Co based electrodes).
Strangely, this made me think about the recurrent laryngeal nerve in giraffes.
The nerve takes a 15-foot detour down the long neck and loops under the aorta near the heart before it travels back up because evolution needed to stay backwards compatible with previous iterations of protogiraffes as environmental selection pressure lengthened the neck.
I love this fact. If you're a fish with no neck, the route it takes is the most direct and obvious. But as evolution gradually lengthened necks the route remained the same!
High risk bets like that cause bubbles. If that bet doesnt pay off then there will be a talent crisis that the american tech industry may not recover from
No. The powder he's promoting in the video (which performs better than pods) actually costs more per wash than the most effective pods on the market (Cascade Platinum Plus).
Not the GP, but do you think Serena Williams - world number 1 womens tennis player for 319 weeks, who trained for 5 hours per day at her peak - has insufficient grit?
Grit, or willpower, or whatever you want to name it isn't a unique, constant value. There are plenty of athletes who could spent hours training every day but are overcome by addictions. People who grind at work but cannot fill paperwork to save their life. That will diligently do something for months then stops after an unexpected interruption.
There's probably generally a bit of correlation. But just because someone can be very focused and go to extreme lengths in one aspect of their life doesn't mean they can consistently do it in every aspect of their life.
Not true for everyone, or perhaps even most playing in this space.
Every batch friends of mine have ordered has been independently tested for purity and dosing. Random batches also tested for sterility.
Plenty of folks yolo it, but it’s not like it was a couple years ago. Lots of group buys being done that order a large batch and then do random sampling for lab testing.
Not to defend buying research chemicals of unknown safety, but that isnt what he said. Independent labs test for purity and provide certification to the companies that sell them. Those certifications can be verified by anyone. So its much less trust necessary to know what you are getting.
> Conversely, entire branches of knowledge can be lost if not enough people are working in the area to maintain a common ground of understanding.
Especially if the work is classified.
The manufacture of FOGBANK, a key material for a thermonuclear weapon's interstage, was lost by 2000 because so few people were involved with its manufacture and the ones who knew retired or moved on. It's thought to be an aerogel-like substance.
5 years and millions in expensive reverse engineering was required to figure it out again.
My favorite part about the FOGBANK story is that once they figured out how to manufacture it again, the new version of the material was more chemically pure than the old version, but this actually made the material LESS effective, so they had to add spcific impruities back into it to make it work correctly.
Crustal abundance up to 1000x that of lithium - pretty much every nation has effectively unlimited supply, it's no longer a barrier or a geographically limited resource like lithium.
No significant damage going down to 0V, can even be stored at 0V - much safer than lithium which gets excitable once out of its prefered voltage range.
Cold weather performance down to -30C - northern latitude users don't have as much range anxiety in the winter.
Basically, the only problem I see is that companies that have made significant long-term investments in lithium could take a big hit. Countries that banked on their lithium reserves as a key future resource for will have to adjust their strategy.
Lithium batteries will likely still have a place in the high performance realm but but for the majority of run-of-the-mill applications - everything from customer electronics to EVs to offgrid storage - it's hard to see how sodium-ion wouldn't quickly replace it.
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