Next Generation Battery Emerges

Frequently a new product in the energy industry takes off like a rocket, finding many new applications in a few years, selling in huge volumes and spawning many new companies. That is the up-side. The down-side is they frequently also spawn their competition. In this case the former is the lithium-ion battery, and the latter is an emerging competitor: the sodium-ion battery.

This was inevitable. lithium and sodium are both Alkali Metals, column 1 of the Periodic Table of Elements, and they are only one row apart, so they share many characteristics. Lithium is actually very common, but current demand for lithium-ion batteries is stretching the supply to the limit and driving up pricing. Sodium is much more common than lithium, so it is unlikely that any surge in demand for these would ever significantly elevate pricing. That is only where advantages of sodium-ion batteries start.