I think it was reading Volt Rush when I realised that we are living in a lithium economy. I am typing this on a MacBook Air, with my to do list on my iPad and my iPhone in my pocket – all these sleek devices which give me access to the digital world wouldn’t be feasible without lithium batteries. And then we have the EV revolution and its less glamorous cousin, the Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) which allows us to time shift renewable energy from when it is generated to when it is needed. Lithium at the heart of it all… until…

…the largest EV battery manufacturer in the world CATL dropped a huge bomb on all that. They announced that, along with motor manufacture CHANGAN (who I only heard of 6 months ago when a showroom opened around the corner), that they would be selling sodium ion battery cars from mid-2026.

Whoa!

Given it makes up 50% of table salt, sodium has clear cost, availability and environmental benefits over lithium. But it gets better – no cobalt or nickel, two of the most problematic minerals in the world (although the handwringing over Co and Ni in EV batteries doesn’t seem to extend to consumer electronics for some reason). Energy density is slightly lower than Lithium, but CATL/CHANGAN claim a range of 400km on a single charge which covers the vast majority of use cases, and a projected limit of 600km which is further than anyone should drive without a break. Costs are currently higher than lithium due to (lack of) economies of scale, but are projected to fall to 57% of lithium battery costs as things ramp up.

This low cost, but lower energy density, nature of sodium makes me think that BESS might be where sodium ion batteries really thrive in the short term. But I’m also sure that, as the S-curves kick in, we will see sodium eclipse lithium.

And that’s the rub. We keep seeing people comparing brand new tech with mature tech. The difference is potential – you can’t squeeze much more out of a technology at the top of the S curve, but the clean power revolution is largely just starting to move onto the steep upward slope of performance improvement. Hold on to your hats – it is incredibly exciting!