On December 20, the power battery manufacturer Ningde Times said in response to investors' questions online that the company has launched the industrialization layout of sodium-ion batteries and will form a basic industrial chain by 2023.
CATL replied to investors
It is reported that sodium-ion batteries rely on sodium ions to move between the positive and negative electrodes to achieve charging or discharging, and their working principle is similar to lithium-ion batteries. Although sodium-ion batteries and lithium-ion batteries have great differences in cathode materials, sodium-ion batteries have high compatibility with lithium batteries in terms of manufacturing and production equipment. Therefore, for manufacturers who previously produced lithium-ion batteries, switching to sodium-ion batteries will not cause incompatibilities on the device.
Sodium-ion batteries
In July this year, CATL held an online conference and officially released the first generation of sodium-ion battery products. According to the Cataline era, the cell energy density of the sodium-ion battery reaches 160Wh/kg, and at the same time, in the normal temperature environment, it takes only 15 minutes to charge the power to 80%. In response to the problem of low temperature leading to a decrease in battery activity, CATL said that the battery can still have 90% battery efficiency even in an environment of minus 20 degrees.
With the sharp increase in global demand for batteries, the price of lithium resources is also soaring. Compared with lithium, sodium reserves in nature are more abundant, so the cost of battery production is cheaper, with the increasing demand for batteries, the gap between the cost of the two will further increase, which is also the main reason why the Ningde era began to lay out sodium-ion batteries. According to the Ningde era, the energy density of the next generation of sodium-ion batteries will reach 200Wh/kg, and the energy density will gradually move closer to the mainstream ternary lithium batteries.