This article is about a sodium-ion battery which is a different chemistry to the one BYD claimed those results on (that was LFP).
Sodium-ion is exciting because it has the potential to have less degradation over time, much less sensitivity to cold and less reliance on rare earth metals. Could also end up significantly cheaper. However it has struggled to reach the same energy densities and so hasn’t been practical thus far.
This seems like a big step towards it being a practical technology choice for certain models, if it bears out.
What sodium ion lacks in energy density, it actually partially gains back in the reduced need for cooling. The same properties that make it work across a larger temperature range also mean that you don't need a lot of (or any) cooling/heating to condition the battery. That means less weight is used for that and less energy is needed for running a heat pump.
Another thing here is that volumetric density matters more than weight density in cars. Space comes at a premium and while weight affects efficiency somewhat, it pales in comparison to aerodynamics and rolling resistance. The difference between the best and the worst cars on the road is at least 3x. You have some heavy, brick shaped, monstrosities that barely do 1.5 miles per kwh and then you have some cars with low drag coefficient that easily do 5-6 miles per kwh. Even swapping tires can add meaningful range. Weight reductions help a bit but the difference between the best and worst energy densities on a 60kwh battery is probably 1-2 big passengers in terms of weight.
Peak energy makes sodium ion batteries for energy storage. Their pilot batteries are deployed in a desert. High temperatures during the day, freezing temperatures at night. They use only passive cooling without any moving parts (fans, pumps, etc.). Aside from that being impressive, that also lowers maintenance cost because it reduces the amount of stuff that actually needs servicing.
Sodium ion gains back volume because it doesn't need cooling. At the cell level, they are worse but at the pack level, it starts looking pretty decent. Anyway, there are multiple sodium ion batteries on the road now in China. It's practical right now. The rest is just the widening technology gap the US and EU have with China. We'll just have to wait a few years for local manufacturers to catch up. Some models with these batteries will probably start making it to the EU in the next two years or so.
Well it is exciting, but not for the reasons you think. More like a Michael Bay movie exciting...there is nothing practical about this design. Most of the cost will be safety systems designed to prevent the battery from being exciting and even then a crash will likely set them off. Pure Na-ion probably isn't viable and certainly isn't viable in a car. Maybe mixing in some Na into the Li-ion to stretch the small amount of Lithium but even then you are significantly increasing the volatility of the battery.
This isn't a practical step, its an act of desperation from people who don't want to admit that large scale electrification is a dumb idea. We electrified everything that made sense to electrify a half century ago.
> Most of the cost will be safety systems designed to prevent the battery from being exciting and even then a crash will likely set them off.
People say the same thing about Li-ion batteries yet they have proven to be significantly less likely to catch fire compared to ICE vehicles [1].
> people who don't want to admit that large scale electrification is a dumb idea. We electrified everything that made sense to electrify a half century ago.
I'm very curious to hear why you think this. If nothing else, the 'situation' with the Strait of Hormuz would seem to have shown the importance of energy independence achieved through large scale electrification. Individually, I couldn't go back to an ICE car or even garden tools, they're worse in every way.
I went in and played a few videos. I'm not sure if anything in there is "sobering" to me (as an EV owner), all the incidents that he shows make sense and the physics are easy to understand.
He seems to be pretty knowledgeable about battery and EV architecture and the stated facts and numbers seem solid, but it also sounds like he takes great care not to scare away his flock of EV-hating idiots.
Just because you state your opinion confidently, does not mean you are correct. For example, as of 2024, there are 30 billion kilograms of proven reserves of lithium, more than enough to replace every single one of the 1.5 billion ICE cars in the world with an electric car. Please focus more on getting the facts right, and less on speculating about the character of other commenters in an overemotional manner.
Elemental sodium is reactive. Ionic sodium is not, lest you blow up your dinner. Furthermore, the lithium part of a Li-ion battery isn't the flammable part, the electrolyte is.
> If you want to replace FF there is exactly one solution, that's nuclear.
> Stop acting like you care about this issue. You have never cared enough to learn about it, so until you do, stop spreading misinformation about how physics works.
It's wild for you, in particular, to take such a weirdly aggressive stance here. Zero basis in reality, just virtue signaling.
> Just like you (at the moment) are acting like you don't care if people die in fires.
There is nothing in my comment that could possibly be interpreted as meaning I don't care about people dying in fires.
> If you want to replace FF there is exactly one solution, that's nuclear.
We're talking about batteries, so I'm not sure how this is relevant unless you want reactors in cars?
> Stop acting like you care about this issue. You have never cared enough to learn about it, so until you do, stop spreading misinformation about how physics works.
I made a single, sourced, claim in my comment and didn't mention physics once?
> Too bad there isn't enough Li for everyone to have one.
Could this be why companies are looking at alternatives? Either way, this claim really should be provided with a source.
I ride an electric scooter to work. An older friend of mine saw this, and reminisced about how he rode a gasoline-powered scooter to work 20 years ago in the early 2000s, and how he had to deal with the fact that it was loud and smelled of gasoline. I'm sure it was possible to buy some kind of electric scooter then, maybe even one that would've worked for his commuting needs. But I'm not surprised that lithium ion battery tech got significantly better over those 20 years, such that when I bought my scooter last year it didn't even occur to me to look and see if there was something gas-powered I could've bought.
This “nobody cycles in bad weather” is a tired myth. Yes, there’s some truth in it but cycling numbers past the traffic counters in my city in the UK (very similar climate) dip by 10-30% in winter months, and the higher end of those is mostly leisure routes not commuting ones. The Netherlands has a lot of rain and much more cycling than most other places.
What about for languages that allow pretty much anything in identifiers or variables. JS for example. Or bash. Don't need eval to do anything crazy there.
Except the other examples used to work like Apple’s and have switched to the scroll locked implementation.
I think I prefer that mode to be honest, because it leaves you in a consistent place for up/down to take you to instead of it potentially depending where your selection is in the row.
Yeah the real pain is button pressing down / up / back in the TV UI. Definitely a fun grab bag of possible outcomes! I don’t think there’s a good solution without a militant UI person in charge of the whole shebang - some radical simplification would likely be needed.
The reality is that the click ipod was much better at scrolling media than the Apple TV is. And I own a lot of Apple TVs - I think it’s a good device. But it was far faster to scroll through media 20 years ago.
Because batteries are still expensive, this is a tough sell for most of the market. You would be removing lots of things that most buyers associate with more luxury cars, but not actually saving much of the cost and therefore not reducing the price that much.
I think (hope) this niche will start to make a comeback as the underlying tech continues to get cheaper. You are starting to see glimmers of it in the low low end with some micromobility cars in Europe just providing phone holders instead of screens.
The legionella thing is a little overblown fwiw. 50 degrees is perfectly adequate, and you can go lower with very little risk if you set it to briefly bump up to 60 every week or two. Even that is not hugely necessary in a domestic setting.
My partner researches one parasite named in this study (a type of whipworm) and they actually get their eggs for in vitro work from another researcher abroad who infected himself with the parasite because he finds it helps with his autoimmune disease. He harvests the eggs and distributes them to other teams.
That makes sense because to an extent the immune system can’t walk and chew gum at the same time. Immune cells often get polarized to either type 1 (viruses, cancer, autoimmunity) or type 2 (parasites, worms, toxins) immune responses but not both. So he’s effectively distracting his immune system.
Scientists that study mosquitoes in a lab will commonly feed the mosquitoes with their own blood. Literally sticking their arm in and letting them feed.
You might want to have tubes with both Presta and Schrader valves (to match the existing tube on the other tire). Theoretically you could use either, but some rims might have a hole that's only small enough for a Presta valve (so I guess that makes Presta slightly more compatible in an emergency!).
I agree that there's flexibility in the sizes. When I wanted to stock up my work's garage with spare bike tires, I got four kinds in total (basically a small Presta, a small Schrader, a large Presta, and a large Schrader). This officially covered pretty much every common road and hybrid or mountain bike with something that was officially rated or matched to it. But yes, as far as I know, one could probably get by in practice with fewer than that and use things that are officially slightly mismatched.
Specifically, I got the Specialized "Standard Schrader" 700x20-28c and 700x28-38c, and "Standard Presta" 700x20-28c and 700x28-38c tubes (the smaller ones more likely for road bikes, the larger ones more likely for mountain bikes). These are about $8 each in the U.S., so a total of about $32 for the set of four. 700c is increasingly common, although there are several other diameters that have been or are being used.
Just having a bike pump can be pretty helpful in many circumstances!
I too am irritated by their software but they do make nice hardware. I’d have their headphones if I trusted their software, the hardware is perfect IMO. Open and upgradable is not really their forte though.
Sodium-ion is exciting because it has the potential to have less degradation over time, much less sensitivity to cold and less reliance on rare earth metals. Could also end up significantly cheaper. However it has struggled to reach the same energy densities and so hasn’t been practical thus far.
This seems like a big step towards it being a practical technology choice for certain models, if it bears out.
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