Good News & Bad News, page-44831

Yeh. Poor cousin Sodium battery was commercialised because China thinks it could be frozen out of the Lithium supply chain so they are happy to accept the poor cousin battery as they can just take the extra land required to accommodate all those extra containers (You know, that energy density thing and 11 is bigger than 3) from peasant farmers. Not only that, they are so scared of their long term Lithium raw materials shortfall, they are happy to pay more for the Na (11) (poor less energy dense cousin) battery.

They are stuck with more expensive Na batteries because LFP batteries are currently cheaper and there is no bottlenecks in the supply chain. Apparently, excess Lithium, conversion and cells.

Don't like HiNa Batteries chances of surviving this period of low LFP cell prices. They must be selling the poor cousin sodium batteries at a loss. Last fund raising in April last year. I hazard a guess they'll be back on the CR bandwagon again soon.
https://www.cbinsights.com/company/hina-battery/financials

The technology is generally seen as the battery chemistry most well-placed to commercialise at scale and ease supply chain bottlenecks around lithium-ion, the dominant battery chemistry for both electric vehicles (EVs) and BESS applications.

Sodium-ion has a lower energy density and, because of lower scale, generally a higher cost than lithium-ion, although by 2025 it could already be 15-30% cheaper than lithium-ion according to BYD. However, commercialisation and cost reductions have come slower than expected, Yicai Global said.

Energy-Storage.news has been told anecdotally that one reason China is investing so heavily on sodium-ion technology is because of fears that, long-term, it could start to be cut out of the lithium supply chain. China does dominate the supply chain today, both in terms of battery manufacturing and lithium refining, but HiNa’s announcement pointed out that it only has about 6% of the world’s lithium reserves for mining, whereas it has abundant reserves of the minerals for sodium-ion batteries.