Comment by toomuchtodo
4 months ago
LFP chemistries are approaching ~$50/kWh, and CATL's sodium chemistry is supposed to be ~$40/kWh (per CATL); soon it will be more expensive to ship the battery storage than the storage itself.
"Watershed moment:" Big battery storage prices hit record low in China auction - https://about.bnef.com/insights/clean-transport/china-alread... - April 19th, 2024
Currently "Sodium Battery Cell" is priced at US$50–70/kWh on the Shanghai Metals Market, which gives every appearance of being a real thing: https://www.metal.com/en/markets/43. They list LFP batteries currently at US$38–52/kWh: https://www.metal.com/en/markets/42
I think you may be dramatically overestimating how much container shipping costs.
("Shanghai Metals Market" is reportedly a consultancy which provides price data, not a market.)
Sodium batteries have significantly lower round-trip efficiency, so they have to be cheaper to win against LFP.
That's because of the huge range of voltages in the charge curve - resistive losses in wiring scale with the square of current. When the voltage drops, the current needs to increase for the same power.
If you can accept low power/current output (which EVs cant, but homes can), this isn't so bad.