It’s interesting to view Fossil Fuel industry supporters, and the demise of the industry as renewables take over the world, through Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s famous five stages of grief - denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Fewer and fewer people are in denial, and most seem to have moved on to the anger & bargaining stage. This latest announcement from CATL should bring more to the depression & acceptance stages.
Most vans and trucks are owned by businesses, big and small. Soon they’ll have a choice. Stick with expensive gasoline, or go for the electric option that gets cheaper every year that passes. Being businesses, which do you guess they’ll go for?
Up next - CATL says they have sodium batteries for passenger cars that are 10–19 dollars/kWh, that is approx 10% of current lithium battery prices, which are already cheaper than gasoline.
All of this, for people who are paying attention, is one more nail in the fossil fuel coffin.
CATL launches sodium batteries: extremely durable and stable at –40°C
The energy density is still quite low. These appear to be for short city transport, especially with such a small capacity. Sodium promises even higher energy density than current NCA, so these batteries are very early in their R&D journey. Still, cool to finally see real world use of sodium batteries. Once we start seeing batteries with real world range of 1,000km+, I think we see mass adoption of EVs. It would eliminate the last major roadblock for most consumers: range anxiety.
Never mind vehicles, I want a slightly unreasonable number of those batteries for my house. At those sorts of prices you stop having to work out your energy budget to spec batteries, just approximate it, double it, and call it good.
It’s the performant at -40 that intrigues me. In Canada, there are many regions where an electric vehicle just isn’t viable. If you need to drive to a rural area in the middle of January, good luck. A frozen lithium battery makes either for a long trip with multiple recharges, or not working entirely.
A new battery that can withstand the cold would definitely convince some anti-EV folks around here.
it’s probably an important feature for any serious attempt at electric aircraft as well, given how up is cold sometimes.
You still need tons of heat for the cabin. At those temperatures the waste heat from the engine is actually not wasted since the meatbags inside need to be warm.
It would hurt range a lot but for commuting that’s probably still fine, and no worries about heating up the car more than having the windows defrosted before you drive it.
Our 2025 Ioniq 6 gets 530km in summer, but about 350 (or less ) in winter. Drop that by about 60km if the heat is on full.
The real problem is that charging stations are sometimes 100km apart, many “pumps” are not working, most max out at 50kW (our car can handle up to 350kW), and because of all these factors, you might have to wait an hour or two for other cars to finish before even starting your charge, and then charging can take 90 minutes.
Cold weather like we’ve been having (-25°C or colder some nights) makes this even worse.
Good to hear from someone who actually does this. Considering how big and empty Canada is I don’t see how there’s ever going to be fast chargers unless freight uses them, rail freight is way better for road safety and efficiency though (even with diesel locomotives, it uses 10-20% of the fuel road vehicles do).
Even at half efficiency in my EV in the winter, I’m still beating any car at 40 mpg dollar for dollar in what I pay in electricity rates.
Yes for most uses EVs are more cost efficient and only suck for long trips, which most people don’t do often if at all. Makes you wish for actually good train services, and maybe a comeback of train services where you can ship your car before the meat bags.
It’s thing like this that make unsure when to pull the EV trigger.
I’m currently shopping for a used EV, 2022 and newer, but I’m not sure if I should wait a couple more years and let the tech keep developing.
I just bought my first EV, a second hand Renault Zoe from 2021 and I love everything about the experience. It’s so much fun to drive and a big step further away from the stranglehold of the fossil destroyers. Not needing to stop at gas stations anymore brings me tears of relief. I’m privileged enough to charge it at home from my own wallbox and even without solar on my roof, it’s already cheaper than gas.
Technology will probably keep improving and new types of batteries will hit high priced flagship cars first. It takes time for innovation to trickle down to the lower priced cars, then to used cars. As with phones and computers, life is great (and super affordable) a couple generations behind new technology. So if you don’t want to wait another decade or spend 45.000€, I’d recommend to get one now, enjoy all the good stuff that’s already here and get a next level sci-fi car after that.I bought my EV three years ago. I have no regrets. It gets me where I need to go, and I haven’t visited a gas station since. Technology is always moving forward. At some point you have to decide “this is good enough for what I need”.
That’s good advice. After looking into the upcoming tech more, I think we have reached the good enough to price point for me.
I’m not sure I believe they’ve gotten anywhere close to anger yet.
I’m excited for all new battery tech, we will drag people kicking and screaming into a safer less polluting future.
I love seeing new battery tech but that doesn’t mean I’m going to buy an electric car.
