The globe looks radically different when presented in transport-energy-cost-distance.

Bulk container ships are crazy efficient. It makes more energy sense for a nation like France to trade with the eastern US than it does with Hungary.

nothing stops them from also using swarms of solar panels on their roofs to at minimum offset the energy needs, localized power plants to save on transmission costs, raw high voltage power.

Hetzner does this!

They are not forced to make those kinds of capital investments if they're unable - they'd be no worse off than today. Those who do get cheaper electricity (in lieu of whatever they could've otherwise spent that capital on).

However, it's the onus of the gov't (regional or federal) to create the investment needed for large, industrial scale solar and battery storage. That's what taxpayer money should be spent on.

yah, this is more for low density/mid density housing, I am sure the roots of 2-3 floor apts should be more than enough to sustain it as energy needs of apartments are lower to begin with. They can also bleed them into parking lots and have cover from the sun.

Technically, you can turn off the sun with a nuclear winter. But in that case your main problem would be starvation anyway.

It's batshit crazy that the most powerful and influential person in the world dismisses the above (practical, clinical and irrefutable) as "a green scam" and people go along with it. We do so at our peril on so many levels.

having a military grade generator (can pick up decomissioned ones for pretty cheap) as a backup still works.

It might not be needed though if you have a battery generator and enough solar panels.

But if you have a BBQ with propane and the sun didn't shine for many many days that should be sufficient.

What sodium ion lacks in energy density, it actually partially gains back in the reduced need for cooling. The same properties that make it work across a larger temperature range also mean that you don't need a lot of (or any) cooling/heating to condition the battery. That means less weight is used for that and less energy is needed for running a heat pump.

Another thing here is that volumetric density matters more than weight density in cars. Space comes at a premium and while weight affects efficiency somewhat, it pales in comparison to aerodynamics and rolling resistance. The difference between the best and the worst cars on the road is at least 3x. You have some heavy, brick shaped, monstrosities that barely do 1.5 miles per kwh and then you have some cars with low drag coefficient that easily do 5-6 miles per kwh. Even swapping tires can add meaningful range. Weight reductions help a bit but the difference between the best and worst energy densities on a 60kwh battery is probably 1-2 big passengers in terms of weight.

Peak energy makes sodium ion batteries for energy storage. Their pilot batteries are deployed in a desert. High temperatures during the day, freezing temperatures at night. They use only passive cooling without any moving parts (fans, pumps, etc.). Aside from that being impressive, that also lowers maintenance cost because it reduces the amount of stuff that actually needs servicing.

Sodium ion gains back volume because it doesn't need cooling. At the cell level, they are worse but at the pack level, it starts looking pretty decent. Anyway, there are multiple sodium ion batteries on the road now in China. It's practical right now. The rest is just the widening technology gap the US and EU have with China. We'll just have to wait a few years for local manufacturers to catch up. Some models with these batteries will probably start making it to the EU in the next two years or so.

"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.

And the fire safety risks are significantly reduced (thermal runaway is much harder). They can also be transported and stored completely discharged, something not done with lithium ion batteries because of it degrades them much more than regular usage.

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.

Sodium-ion batteries will always be heavier than the best lithium-ion batteries, but for now they have the same energy per kilogram with LFP batteries.

So they have 2 essential advantages over LFP, retention of capacity to much lower temperatures and their cost will become significantly lower when their production technology will be more mature, because they not only do not use lithium, but they also do not use other expensive substances, e.g. nickel or cobalt.

Ok, but the Rivian R1S is a particularly inefficient EV (2-2.5 mi/kWh = 31-25 kWh/100 km). 12.5 kWh/100 km is efficient but not outlandishly so considering these are likely CLTC ranges, which are higher than WLTP which are higher than EPA, and the car in question is not in fact a dumptruck.

I've driven a car that had about a 200 mile range (small fuel tank) and it's annoying on a long drive, given that you don't want to push it to the extreme but start looking for a fuel stop somewhere around 1/3 tank remaining. So you end up stopping to refuel every 2-3 hours. Still better than a 1-hour recharge every 300 though.

lithium cost $22/kg. 1 KW/h is 0.2kg lithium in 5 kg of batteries that costs $100 retail on AliExpress. So it isn't about lithium price. It seems that just manufacturing and delivering a 1kg of low-mid-complexity stuff comes about $20/kg. (just for example - a car weights 1000-2000kg and costs $30K)

To a first approximation, an inability to get UL certification means a product failed to demonstrate compliance with well established safety expectations…technically it means the insurance industry will not treat it as ordinary risk.

The ramifications range from inability to obtain product liability insurance for manufacturers, the voiding of general liability for users, and the fire marshal shutting down places where the system is installed.

Keep in mind that new products get listed under new standards developed by manufacturers all the time. But only when the new standard demonstrates ordinary safety.

The simplest likely explanation is that vc did not believe the technology was worth betting on.

In this case, Natron was focused on energy-storage for data centers, a sector which is ordinarily a prime recipient of government intervention.

Apparently, there were shenanigans from investors/creditors. So the company got quietly carved up instead of going through a bankruptcy auction.

I'm looking forward to the eventual investigational report.

BTW, the company was Natron Energy.

Decent returns aren't enough for a risky investment, they need to be spectacular returns.

The benefit to the country as a whole is potentially large, but most of it wouldn't show up as profit for the company itself. I'm sure it would do quite well if it was successful, but the benefits to car manufacturers and to having this sort of technology on-shore would not translate into monetary returns on private investment. That's the sort of thing government intervention is good for.

"Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake"

It is a slightly weird experience trying to buy an EV as they genuinely do get significantly better very quickly. It's like buying a computer in the 90s or a phone in the 00s.

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Yes, but have you ever seen 8 queues of cars, about 8-10 cars in each, at Sams Club or Costco buying gas? You'd need a awful lot of battery buffer to keep up with that kind of demand. At some point you'd deplete the batteries and be stuck with charging at whatever rate the grid connection could deliver.

Sure

https://chemistry-europe.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10...

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352152X2...

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsenergylett.5c02345

Also understand, nothing bad happens under normal conditions. It's when the cell goes awry that bad things happen. 300C is easily obtainable by a runaway cell. I mean, short two ends of the battery together with a thin foil and see how quickly it hits 300C...

Also I'm not trying to fear monger, battery failures are very rare. But SIBs aren't totally free of scary failure modes.

> Such temperatures cannot be reached in normal conditions

Thank you for the reasonable chuckle I got from this understatement of the day.

Or you could just have the batteries in a separate enclosure away from your house. I think I would be inclined to do this anyway, certainly for Lithium batteries given the possibility of fire.

hydrogen sulfide is not anywhere in the same category. When you consider failure you have to consider what is the most catastrophic possibility and if that is “this battery silently kills people” then you dont make it.

I doubt that it is metallic sodium, for the same reason why the rechargeable lithium batteries do not use metallic lithium electrodes like the non-rechargeable batteries.

During charge-recharge cycles, a metallic electrode is likely to be degraded quickly.

So it is more likely that the reduced sodium atoms are intercalated in some porous electrode, e.g. of carbon, while at the other electrode the sodium ions are intercalated in some substance similar to Prussian blue.

The volatility of sodium does not matter, because it is not in contact with air or another gas, but only with electrolyte.

This is incredibly misleading. It's not like there's a bunch of metallic sodium sitting in the battery waiting to react. It's a lot closer to a solid solution. Do you have a personal injury lawyer on speed dial for your table salt?