Ok it needs to be said. The smart play is to have governments to subsidize this process and build up the raw inventory for lithium. That way, ie (US) could have tons and tons of raw lithium without having to mine it.
Why not both? Downcycle the old EV batteries for grid storage, then when they reach the end of useful life, recycle them. We need to resurrect the first 2 R’s (Reduce, Reuse) to be able to survive on this planet.
They are listed in order of importance… reduce first, if you can’t, then reuse. If you can’t reuse, then recycle.
Problem is, we saw “recycle” and thougt “infinite resources” and ditched the other two… turns out that most things cant really be recycled, so now it’s just landfill all the way
I wish I could remember where I read it, but the focus on just Recycle was encouraged as the main narrative by corporations which didn’t want to give up the myth of endless growth.
That’s great and all, but not all batteries need lithium. When another battery technology gets mature enough to surpass lithium based batteries, then we’ll still be stuck on old tech cause the government is subsiding it.
This also reduces the incentive for making more lithium efficient batteries.
Subsidies can help, but they need to be more generalized so they don’t create issues moving past current tech. Heck, look at how much trouble we’re having getting past oil, that’s a perfect example.
Under modern physics, Lithium is pretty much the best possible chemical to build batteries out of. Anything else that might be better won’t be a chemical battery, and it’s not like there’s any reason to suspect some new magic thing will be created like a pocket-size fusion reactor that will make chemical batteries totally obsolete any time soon. Decades more of lithium batteries being relevant are as close to guaranteed as can be.
Sodium batteries are cheaper, safer, and last longer than lithium batteries. That’s exactly what you want for grid-scale energy storage. So yes, sodium IS better than lithium for grid-scale energy storage
Ok it needs to be said. The smart play is to have governments to subsidize this process and build up the raw inventory for lithium. That way, ie (US) could have tons and tons of raw lithium without having to mine it.
Wouldn’t it be smarter to use old EV batteries for grid storage?
Why not both? Downcycle the old EV batteries for grid storage, then when they reach the end of useful life, recycle them. We need to resurrect the first 2 R’s (Reduce, Reuse) to be able to survive on this planet.
They are listed in order of importance… reduce first, if you can’t, then reuse. If you can’t reuse, then recycle.
Problem is, we saw “recycle” and thougt “infinite resources” and ditched the other two… turns out that most things cant really be recycled, so now it’s just landfill all the way
I wish I could remember where I read it, but the focus on just Recycle was encouraged as the main narrative by corporations which didn’t want to give up the myth of endless growth.
That’s great and all, but not all batteries need lithium. When another battery technology gets mature enough to surpass lithium based batteries, then we’ll still be stuck on old tech cause the government is subsiding it.
This also reduces the incentive for making more lithium efficient batteries.
Subsidies can help, but they need to be more generalized so they don’t create issues moving past current tech. Heck, look at how much trouble we’re having getting past oil, that’s a perfect example.
Under modern physics, Lithium is pretty much the best possible chemical to build batteries out of. Anything else that might be better won’t be a chemical battery, and it’s not like there’s any reason to suspect some new magic thing will be created like a pocket-size fusion reactor that will make chemical batteries totally obsolete any time soon. Decades more of lithium batteries being relevant are as close to guaranteed as can be.
Sodium batteries? Of course it depends on their use a bit.
Those are not “better” batteries chemically or electrically. They are just cheaper and don’t use lithium which is considered a feature.
Sodium batteries are cheaper, safer, and last longer than lithium batteries. That’s exactly what you want for grid-scale energy storage. So yes, sodium IS better than lithium for grid-scale energy storage
They are also fine for cars that don’t need to have 1000km of range, for some stupid reason.
And you can even mix-and-match cells of both types in a vehicle to better fit a target demographic. It’s not simply one or the other.
That being said, it’s better to have a car with a 200 mile range sodium battery and a small range extender for that 2-4 times per year trip