Sodium ion battery breakthrough

From that same article that you linked. Here is another story related to sodium-ion battery tech.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/First...ycles-that-charge-in-10-minutes.877961.0.html

 

Its basically swapping Lithium for vanadium. Lithium can be gathered from seawater as well, im not sure the economics of using vanadium is better long term, especially since the energy density is currently lower than Lithium. And from a supply perspective, its mined in China and eastern Russia currently, not exactly promising...

 

Did you get a chance to see the video? I think they said it's American mined... Michigan?

 

NOTE: I am not suggesting people buy these. There are still issues.

The developer of the Dr. Prius app, a very popular app among Prius owners to monitor the health of their cars' batteries, has a company NexPower. He has spent the last few years designing and selling replacement Lithium-ion "blades" (modules) to replace the blades that came from Toyota with nickle metal hydride cells (NiMH). They were popular among many Prius owners facing either battery replacement or rebuilding. While there were performance increases, there also were major problems. Lithium-ion and NiMH require different charging algorithms and it is critical that the battery management system monitor each lithium-ion cell, something the Prius' system was not designed to do. His workaround for the monitoring issue was not particularly safe.

Still many people purchased his first and second version replacements at around $2000-$2500 and reported increased fuel economy, longer EV range and more power. He was not able to overcome the aforementioned issues, however.

He is now releasing version 3 and has abandoned lithium-ion in favor of sodium-ion chemistry. The batteries are cheaper, $1800, available from more sources and offer better performance than the lithium-ion cells. The issue again is battery cell management/monitoring, but that's an issue with the car's system being designed for NiMH.

Sodium-ion chemistry seems to have some genuine advantages over both NiMH and lithium-ion and within a few months there will be hundreds, if not thousands of older Priuses driving around with their batteries converted to sodium-ion.

The point of this is that sodium-ion is a workable solution and will be available very soon. It's not a maybe next year thing. Hopefully, they will be in battery packs designed to properly work with their charging and management requirements. If this guy can do this, the big manufacturers with teams of engineers should be able to develope fully workable HVTBs on short order.

Here is a video of him driving his Honda Insight with his prototype sodium-ion battery.



His website:

Toyota hybrid battery upgrade pack
From his FAQs
"
Q: What distinguishes sodium-ion batteries from lithium-ion batteries

A: Beside the cheaper price tag, our sodium-ion cell is much more durable than any lithium-ion cell, here is a comparison of the operating voltage and operating temperature:

lithium-ion (LiFePO4) cell operating voltage: 2.5v ~ 3.65v

sodium-ion chemistry cell operating voltage: 1.5v ~ 4.0v

lithium-ion (LiFePO4) cell operating temperature: 32F ~ 125F

sodium-ion chemistry cell operating temperature: -40F ~ 140F"