Current electric vehicles are based on lithium-ion battery technology, but this technology has insurmountable shortcomings, which is undoubtedly a major disadvantage for the rapid development of the electric vehicle industry, for which countries around the world are actively developing new battery technology, and China has recently successfully broken through and commercialized.
On June 30, the world's largest sodium-ion battery energy storage project was put into operation in Hubei, China, with a production scale of 50 MW/100 MWh.
Sodium-ion batteries are considered to be one of the technologies that can replace lithium-ion batteries, one of the advantages of sodium-ion batteries is safety, it does not catch fire or explode in overcharge, overdischarge, short circuit, acupuncture and other tests; Sodium-ion batteries can withstand higher temperatures, and are prone to spontaneous combustion due to passivation and oxidation in high-temperature environments, and safety has become one of its biggest characteristics.
The second is that the life of the sodium-ion battery is longer, when the number of cycles of the sodium-ion battery reaches 10,000 times, it can still maintain 80% of the capacity, while the capacity of the lithium-ion battery will drop to 70%; Sodium-ion batteries are more suitable for low-temperature environments, and can still have higher capacity retention in -40° environments, and the performance of lithium-ion batteries at low temperatures is greatly reduced.
The second is that sodium-ion batteries do not have to worry about the lack of resources on the earth, sodium is one of the most important elements on the earth, and lithium may only provide the current global population with an electric car, and the cost of sodium deposits is much lower than that of lithium deposits, which will help greatly reduce the cost of batteries, and batteries are one of the main costs of electric vehicles.
China's automotive industry has long recognized that lithium-ion batteries will become a shackle to the development of electric vehicles, for which China is actively developing other battery technologies, and sodium-ion batteries are one of the important technologies for China's automotive industry to make breakthroughs.
China has become the leader of global electric vehicles, because China dominates the global automotive battery, six of the world's top ten power battery companies are Chinese companies, and the top two are China's CATL and BYD, which shows China's strong position in the power battery industry.
China has also become the world's largest electric vehicle market, in 2023, China will sell sixty percent of the world's electric vehicles, produce nearly seventy percent of the world's electric vehicles, the rapid development of electric vehicles has become the engine of Chinese cars, but the problem of spontaneous combustion of lithium-ion batteries has always been a hidden danger in the development of China's electric vehicles.
Today, the commercial use of sodium-ion batteries will completely solve the hidden concerns of the development of electric vehicles in China, and with the large-scale mass production of sodium-ion batteries, the cost of China's power batteries is expected to further decline, the cost is one of the important competitiveness of China's electric vehicles, due to the price war of China's electric vehicles, foreign fuel vehicles have to continue to reduce prices, the development of sodium-ion battery technology will further reduce the cost of China's electric vehicles, and the competitiveness will be further improved.
In markets outside of China, the penetration rate of electric vehicles is less than one percent, of which the spontaneous combustion of lithium-ion batteries is an important obstacle, ocean shipping also has great doubts about the transportation of electric vehicles, the popularity of sodium-ion batteries in the electric vehicle industry, will solve this problem, promote China's electric vehicles to the international market, the global automotive industry will undergo major changes.