CATL announces a sodium battery capable of working at extreme temperatures of -40 degrees

While everyone seems focused on the evolution of electric cars, no less important is the improvement of batteries. The largest companies in the sector are looking for solutions to power the electric cars of the future. There are several avenues of research open, from solid state batteries to sodium batteries. The latter could be the solution to one of the biggest problems of current electric cars, the cold. Current lithium-ion batteries do not like extreme cold. Their performance drops precipitously when the thermometer drops. CATL claims to have solved the problem in the second generation of its sodium batteries.

As you probably know, CATL is the largest manufacturer of batteries for autonomous vehicles. Together with FinDreams, BYD’s subsidiary, they manufacture more than 50% of the installed batteries. A monopoly strengthened after years of work and constant evolution. From time to time CATL advances or presents a new technology, an improvement or research that promises and ends up becoming a reality. In recent years the engineering department seems to have focused on sodium as a substitute element for lithium. Although it has enormous advantages, it also has notable drawbacks, as the founder of CATL himself mentioned some time ago.

Sodium as a substitute element for lithium

The science behind sodium-iron batteries is similar to lithium-ion batteries. They store electrical energy for the movement of ions between the positive electrodes (cathode) and the negative one (anode). One of its many advantages is safety and resistance to low temperatures. Under certain conditions, sodium is a better conductor than lithium and therefore does not suffer as much when the thermometer begins to fall.. In the research and tests that CATL has carried out, they ensure that their second generation of sodium batteries is capable of performing normally even at temperatures of -40º Celsius.

It has been more than a year since CATL claimed to be working on an improvement of sodium batteries with the purpose of replacing them with lithium ones. Engineers aim to achieve a density of 200 Wh/kg. The performance is somewhat lower and that is why for many, sodium is not, at the moment, a substitute. Cost can also be a problem, but due to volume issues. The extraction, refining and processing of lithium for electric vehicle batteries is so widespread that prices today are lower than ever. In fact, CATL is trying to contain and control the price so that its processing remains viable.

Despite the good news, we are still far from seeing sodium batteries commonly installed in electric cars. The economy of scale will allow you to reduce your prices. CATL assures that the battery should be ready to be launched on the market next yearalthough it will not be until two years later, in 2027, when production will reach a critical volume point. According to the company, the current assembly lines would be perfectly valid for assembling sodium cells and modules, so it would not be necessary to make major adaptations in the factories it owns halfway around the world.