Actions
Forum Thread Details
  • State Not Answered
  • Replies 4 replies
  • Subscribers 286 subscribers
  • Views 173 views
  • Users 0 members are here
Related

Is the "imminent" availability of sodium ion batteries affecting your decision of when to switch to an EV or solar house?

dougw

Sodium ion batteries seem to be pretty close to being available and lots of investment is being made into the technology. They promise very fast charging time, 10s of thousands of charge cycles and lower cost than Lithium.

Leave a comment to elaborate on your thinking.

  • 0

    Complicated question -  my response is no doubt affected by living in a very rural area (about 40 miles and 1hour from the nearest motorway)

    Sodium batteries offer of fast charge is not much help with solar.

    And much less than you might think with vehicles. Already in the UK there is a large premium charged on fast charge electricity and serious issues with grid capacity. Just because you car can be charged at 350kW doesn't mean that you will be reliably able to do so.

    Right now I wouldn't buy an electric car - real world range is poor, especially at reasonable prices. My diesel powered car can do 400+ miles on a tankful and the "charge" time is about 5 minutes. The tank won't wear out in 200k miles of travel.

    I noticed a motorway charging station (not that fast either) charging £0.78 per kwh.

    EV's are marginally green, very expensive to buy and run (if you do long journeys) and super inconvenient -sodium batteries won't fix very much of that.

    If you live in a big city you might feel differently.

    MK

  • 0

    EVs using 50% of their battery capacity to keep the car warm is a terrible design decision.

    Ethanol (liquid firewood) is widely available, cheap, and carbon neutral. So dumb.

  • 0

    Maybe if Canada were to drop the 100% tariff on Chinese EVs - then the average person could afford going electric. Seems the way things are set up, the people who need inexpensive transportation the most are specifically blocked from doing so in one way or another - EVs are cheap to run but too expensive to buy. We had some hope when city-speed electric cars were allowed and they only cost around $10k to buy, but then the government suddenly made them illegal again.

    Electric scooters are generally not legal, electric bicycles are kinda pricey too. And also being right on the same road as giant trucks isn't safe or comfortable.

    I'm all in favour of having quieter vehicles on the road that don't send fumes my way, but I feel the government is still being hypocritical in the way they block the biggest percentage of the population from having access to them.