[Wolven]

I was chatting about this in the politics thread but it sounds like a big step has been taken toward a production solid state (sodium-ion) battery by the largest battery company in the world, CATL.

This could be a massive step forward for EVs and household battery walls as the cost of sodium (salt) is a tiny fraction of lithium and sodium is far, far more plentiful. With the first version of these batteries going into production in cars this year it will be interesting to see how quickly they make improvements from V1 to V2 to V5 and beyond.

This is massive for cold climate EVs as sodium handles the cold way better than lithium.

Note: the video calls out that CATL has been oddly quiet about this technology. Is it because the batteries are bogus? Are they protecting trade secrets to establish an industry advantage? Or are they try to avoid political backlash from knuckle draggers?