The first EV with a lithium-free sodium battery hits the road in January

'252 km (157 miles) range' to save others the same skimming I did

This is awesome news. Not because of the car, but because it builds the supply lines for an alternative battery chemistry.

People have been using lithium-ion batteries for home and grid storage, which is nuts if you compare it to other battery types. Lithium is expensive and polluting and only makes sense if you're limited by weight & space. Cheaper batteries, even if they're bigger/heavier, will do wonders to the economics of sustainable electricity production.

Curious how it'll perform in real world conditions. Sodium batteries are supposed to have much better charging times and don't degrade the way lithium batteries do, both of which would be huge. Fingers crossed they live up to expectations.

(Also obligatory "expand and improve public transit damnit!")

Hold up, they solved the energy sink issue with the salt batteries? That's wicked. There were physicists arguing with each other that the power you put in couldn't be gotten back out.

We've only got a stated range out of this (252km/157mi) but there are a lot of factors where this could do well. Sodium batteries should be cheaper, so it'd be great if that translated to the final sale price. Depending on charge times and where you live, this could be a perfectly practical vehicle. If it doesn't degrade like lithium batteries, then that'd be even better. Might make for a great secondary vehicle (or everyday driver, depending).

Question to anyone who might know more: would sodium based batteries be better than lithium ones for the environment, in terms of recycling or disposing of it?

In case they are indeed better, would they be better because it's better to use less lithium in general (so if you use more sodium based ones, you use less lithium) or would they be also better because their own disposal is "nicer" (as in less toxic) for the environment?

My doctor says I can't buy it. Is there a low sodium battery version?

Any new battery technology news needs to be taken with a grain of salt. They are highly likely over-hyped and the actually realized products will have more problems than the current established tech initially.

Sooo... It's a salt truck?

Unfortunately the page is behind the yahoo consent tracker and my DNS resolver by precaution refused to connect.

Wait how is this the first? Didn't the th!nk city have a molten sodium battery years ago?

Before clicking I knew it would be Chinese

Where is the sodium coming from?

Why do all EVs look so stupid. They need to just make a good-looking car into an EV without trying to make it "look" EV