Hacker News Reader

Comment by Roark66 | Hacker News Reader

So where is the catch? Because there is always a catch. It's either that it needs a tiny amount of extremely expensive ingredients (palladium?), or it requires extremely advanced manufacturing techniques? Or its both cheap and easy to make but the mass production makes way too many failures...

There is always something... Therefore I'll believe it when I'm able to but such battery and fly my drone with it.

View on HN

The catch is lower gravimetric energy density (Wh/kg). But sodium-ion is great for stationary energy storage, where gravimetric energy density doesn’t matter that much (unlike automotive, aviation, or handheld tools).

Disclaimer: I’m a former Northvolter, but not involved in that program.

160Wh/kg is not super impressive in the first place, that’s the low end of li-ion although it is the high end of nimh. The energy density (energy per volume) is also unlisted so might not be great.

For reference northvolt also lists lithium-metal batteries at 395Wh/kg, and they do list the density on that one, 797Wh/L. When they acquired the designer (cubert) back in 2021 they listed the possibility of exceeding 1000Wh/L by 2025 though I don’t know if that’s still in the plans (at the times the cells were only listed at 369Wh/kg as well).

This. You need to take any battery-related news with a rather heavy grain of salt, especially when it comes to "solid state" or "sodium" headlines.

> heavy grain of salt > "solid state" or "sodium"

This made me chuckle a little. Thanks!

This is just another announcement. The catch remains unchanged. Engineering all the details of anode, cathode, electrolyte packaging, and manufacturing scale still needs to meet and also prove itself in the real world.

IIRC sodium ion batteries have traditionally had trouble with rapid degradation due to the large size of the sodium ion, which disrupts the carbon electrode via swelling during intercalation. So I would be worried about the number of cycles they can last.

The article does not describe the cycle life of the battery. This has been a common problem with sodium-ion batteries, so the lack of any statement on this matter is concerning.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com