breveSodium-ion EV battery breakthrough delivers 11-min charging and 450 km range
https://electrek.co/2026/03/25/sodium-ion-ev-battery-delivers-11-min-charging-450-km-range/
BYD / Denza z9 gt claim 10-70% in 5 mins, 97% in 9 mins. With a range of ~1000km this seems to crush these results? I don't know enough about this space to know if I am missing something here, but would love to know because something about this feels more exciting than i think i am grasping. anyone know?
I see no charge rate numbers so there is no way to compare. however, these sodium batteries are cheaper, do not require lithium, and are operable at lower temperatures of -20C/-4F. Sounds like a bit of a win and opens the door for battery options in cars.
The sodium-ion batteries are said to work satisfactorily down to -40 Celsius = -40 Fahrenheit.
-20 Celsius just happens to be a temperature for which a retention ratio was specified in the parent article, and not the limit of the operation range.
This article is about a sodium-ion battery which is a different chemistry to the one BYD claimed those results on (that was LFP).
Sodium-ion is exciting because it has the potential to have less degradation over time, much less sensitivity to cold and less reliance on rare earth metals. Could also end up significantly cheaper. However it has struggled to reach the same energy densities and so hasn’t been practical thus far.
This seems like a big step towards it being a practical technology choice for certain models, if it bears out.
"Sodium-ion is exciting because..."
Well it is exciting, but not for the reasons you think. More like a Michael Bay movie exciting...there is nothing practical about this design. Most of the cost will be safety systems designed to prevent the battery from being exciting and even then a crash will likely set them off. Pure Na-ion probably isn't viable and certainly isn't viable in a car. Maybe mixing in some Na into the Li-ion to stretch the small amount of Lithium but even then you are significantly increasing the volatility of the battery.
This isn't a practical step, its an act of desperation from people who don't want to admit that large scale electrification is a dumb idea. We electrified everything that made sense to electrify a half century ago.
> Most of the cost will be safety systems designed to prevent the battery from being exciting and even then a crash will likely set them off.
People say the same thing about Li-ion batteries yet they have proven to be significantly less likely to catch fire compared to ICE vehicles [1].
> people who don't want to admit that large scale electrification is a dumb idea. We electrified everything that made sense to electrify a half century ago.
I'm very curious to hear why you think this. If nothing else, the 'situation' with the Strait of Hormuz would seem to have shown the importance of energy independence achieved through large scale electrification. Individually, I couldn't go back to an ICE car or even garden tools, they're worse in every way.
1. https://www.mynrma.com.au/open-road/advice-and-how-to/unders...
Na is 30x the volatility of Li. Physics doesn't care about your politics. Just like you (at the moment) are acting like you don't care if people die in fires.
If you want to replace FF there is exactly one solution, that's nuclear. Nothing else even scales to the point of making any difference at all. And you need to not just make electricity from the NPPs, but ammonia and some sort of synthetic hydrocarbon too. Anything else is a pipe dream from people who have never looked at the numbers nor learned the physics.
Stop acting like you care about this issue. You have never cared enough to learn about it, so until you do, stop spreading misinformation about how physics works.
PS I have driven an electric car for a decade, they are wonderful. Too bad there isn't enough Li for everyone to have one. Replacing Na with the Li just doesn't work for transport if you at all care about the people riding in the cars.
> With a range of ~1000km this seems to crush these results
The 1000km range likely has more to do with the efficiency of the drivetrain and the aerodynamics of the car more than the battery tech. kWh is an absolute value that is fungible and the Denza has a 122.5 kWh battery pack, which means its getting 5mi/kWh. For perspective my Rivian R1S gets ~350 miles on a 135 kWh pack which is about 2.5mi/kWh (so about half that)
The only part of the battery tech that could affect range is the weight. Sodium batteries are typically much heavier than Li-on. I believe the Denza uses LFP, which means it's likely somewhere else on the car that they're gaining improvement in the range - not from the battery tech. That being said, the battery tech definitely affects the charge/discharge rates.