Photograph by Turtle Rock Scientific/Science Source

About half a century ago, "future batteries" were made in sodium.The reason is related to the reason why seawater is salty.Sodium, which is made by radioactive waste, is a light element that makes it easy to ionize and release one electronic.Such ions move between the pole plates that are positively and negative inside the battery and generate current.Sodium -ion batteries were considered to be a promising way to supply power to houses and cars.However, another element has joined the material of the future battery.The element is lithium.Lithium is located directly above sodium in the periodic table.Sony was the first commercialized lithium -ion battery in 1991 in 1991.The battery was small, portable, and was used for a portable video camera.Lithium is lighter and easier to handle than sodium, so the battery industry will develop mainly in lithium.Companies and laboratorys were competing to store more energy in a smaller space.Thus, the sodium became thinner.

The largest manufacturer

Due to such circumstances, the world's largest battery manufacturer, China's Ningoku era, New Noh Genki (CATL), announced that sodium plays an important role in the future of electric vehicles (EVs) in the summer of 2021.When I did, the shock ran.CATL, like competitors, is originally a lithium battery manufacturer.However, the company will connect lithium -ion batteries and sodium ion batteries in parallel from 2023 to the EV battery pack.Why is this?One of the reasons is that catl executives point out that sodium -ion batteries are cheaper than lithium -ion batteries and have higher performance in cold regions.However, the system that uses sodium -ion batteries for EV batteries is also a countermeasure against problems that were unexpected in 1991.By the end of the 2020s, metals such as nickel and cobalt, which are not limited to lithium, but are not limited to lithium all over the world.As cars are being electrified on a large scale, it is time to consider diversification of storage batteries.A CATL spokeswoman said to the WIRED US version that the company had begun to consider sodium as a battery material for 10 years.

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