“Sodium-ion battery technology is no longer a research achievement in laboratories,” Gao Huan, chief technology officer for EV business at CATL, told reporters at a press conference in Shanghai on Monday. “We have achieved a breakthrough not only in terms of energy storage density and cost, but also found a new key to environmental protection.”
The company’s latest product, which uses sodium as cheaper raw material, will provide EV assemblers and users an alternative to existing technologies that rely on cobalt and lithium.
Gao said the new battery has an energy storage density of 175 watt-hours per kilogram, nearly on par with the 185Wh per kg performance of lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries that are currently used in most Chinese-made EVs.
Nickel-cobalt-aluminium and nickel-cobalt-manganese are the other two main technologies adopted by the world’s major EV builders.
CATL, however, did not disclose the expected cost of the sodium-ion battery nor the firm’s manufacturing capacity for the new product.
