Will Sodium Be The Next Solution?
| Jerry Huang
In 2020, EV market involvers were excitedly speculating that the cost decrease of lithium powered batteries would bring a rapid growth of EV sales worldwide, and truly it did.
When it comes to the first quarter of 2022, most of us are just not ready to meet the “March Madness”, said Mr. Jow Lowry from Global Lithium LLC, on a dramatic price increase of lithium carbonate and lithium hydroxide in February and early March. However he feels that high lithium prices are not going to create demand destruction from EV market. “We have high lithium prices because the lack of investment that has created the supply-demand imbalance. I do not believe that this is going to destroy demand. I believe it is, more correctly put, it’ll forward demand. The EV revolution is going to be limited in this decade by lack of lithium supply. There’s no question about that now,” says Mr. Jow Lowry.
Despite the record high lithium prices, many other battery materials, such as nickel, cobalt and aluminum, have also encountered a historical wave of price increase in Q1 this year, which resulted in continued battery cost increase and more than 20 OEM’s announcements of their EV price raise in March 2022.
So where is the lithium battery heading for? Some experts say that lithium batteries will go to medium-end and high-end EV, consumer electronics, electric marine vehicles and aerial vehicles, etc.
What about the entry-level of EV and energy storage? Will sodium chemistry batteries be another choice for them? There is abundant sodium and other resources on earth for sodium batteries, which is believed to be economical and environment-friendly. Are there any other battery solutions that are highly scalable? Let’s wait and see what research breakthroughs will come next.