Unlike lithium, sodium can be produced from an abundant material: salt. Because the raw ingredients are cheap and widely available, there’s potential for sodium-ion batteries to be significantly less expensive than their lithium-ion counterparts if more companies start making more of them.
Estimated reserves suggest that Earth’s crust has plenty of lithium for billions of EVs. But adding the infrastructure to pull lithium and other materials out of the ground and process it for use in batteries is proving to be a challenge. It can take the better part of a decade in most parts of the world to get a new mine built.
Battery raw materials like lithium carbonate (Li 2 CO 3), lithium hydroxide (LiOH), nickel (Ni) and cobalt (Co) have experienced significant price fluctuations over the past five years. Figures 1 and 2 show the development of material spot prices between 2018 and 2023.
There are already options that reduce the need for some, like cobalt and nickel, but there’s been little recourse for those looking to dethrone lithium. Over the past several months, though, battery companies and automakers in China have announced forays into a new kind of battery chemistry that replaces lithium with sodium.
The volatility in lithium prices and the steadily increasing demand have opened the door for other chemistries, Meng says, adding: “I think sodium is considered a good alternative to relieve that pressure.” Unlike lithium, sodium can be produced from an abundant material: salt.
These new sodium-ion batteries could help push costs down for both stationary storage and electric vehicles, if the technology can meet the high expectations that companies are setting. In March, JAC Motors, an automaker based in China, released photos of a chartreuse car that it said was the world’s first vehicle built with sodium-ion batteries.