The idea of the electric car has been around for a while, but it’s been improved greatly throughout the years leading up to today. And now, it looks like there just might be a new improvement on the horizon: the sodium ion battery. First, let’s look at the lithium ion battery.
Lithium Ion Batteries
Lithium ion batteries are the most common type of batteries we have today in electric cars. They are also extremely effective at powering cars because they can be recharged thousands of times without significantly degrading the usage of these cars, causing people to get excited and truly believe that the world is becoming more environmentally friendly with every electric car made. However, even though the lithium ion battery itself is extremely effective at providing power to vehicles without the use of fossil fuels, the means needed to produce lithium ion batteries tell a much darker story. Lithium hydroxide, which is the main substance needed to make lithium ion batteries, is extremely expensive today, costing almost $80,000 per metric ton, making ingredients needed to produce just the battery of the electric car extremely expensive, running up the cost of electric vehicles.
An even bigger problem with lithium ion battery production is the mining process in which lithium hydroxide is found. The mining process releases massive amounts of carbon dioxide, which combined with the increasing amount of deforestation today, contributes heavily to global warming. However, lithium is also a highly toxic metal, meaning that if any of the lithium that’s mined is introduced into an ecosystem or water supply, it can poison living organisms and turn bodies of water into wastelands. Still think that lithium ion batteries are environmentally friendly?
The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly
But all this has the potential to change with the introduction of the sodium ion battery. The main ingredient needed to make sodium ion batteries is sodium hydroxide. Unlike lithium hydroxide though, sodium hydroxide is laughably cheap, coming in at around $300 per metric ton. That’s around 267 times cheaper than lithium hydroxide! This will drastically reduce the cost of electric vehicles, making them much more affordable and available to a wider range of people. The mining of sodium hydroxide is also more environmentally friendly than lithium hydroxide production. Keep in mind, though, that I’m not saying that it’s good for the environment. It’s just not as bad as lithium hydroxide production. Sodium ion batteries also eliminate the risk of thermal runaway in cars, which can cause fires to erupt in electric cars that use lithium ion batteries, making sodium-ion batteries safer than lithium ones.
There are, however, some disadvantages to the sodium ion battery. For example, sodium ion batteries are not as efficient as lithium ion batteries. They can’t be recharged as many times as lithium ion batteries can be, and they produce less energy than lithium ion batteries, meaning vehicles powered by sodium ion batteries go shorter distances and need to be charged more frequently than lithium ion batteries. This is because as ions move through the battery, the sodium battery’s crystal structure is weakened and eventually gets broken by the movement of ions, not allowing the battery to be recharged. However, some researchers at Cornell University have found a way to improve battery life of sodium batteries, potentially getting rid of this disadvantage in sodium ion batteries.
The Verdict
Overall, sodium ion batteries are cheaper and more environmentally friendly than lithium ion batteries. As huge technology companies conduct more research into the novel field of sodium ion batteries, the future of sodium ion batteries is starting to look extremely promising with even the disadvantages of sodium ion batteries fading away while the advantages are amplified to enormous levels. One day, it’s possible that lithium ion batteries will stop being produced and sodium ion batteries will take the stage by storm.