Sodium-ion batteries for electric vehicles

A consortium of three businesses and a university is moving sodium-ion battery technology from the lab into a commercial battery factory. Sodium-ion batteries replace lithium, a metal that is expensive, geographically concentrated, and environmentally damaging to mine, with sodium—a cheap, abundant material extracted from salt. The project aims to prove that these batteries can be manufactured at scale for electric vehicles. If successful, it could reduce the cost of EV batteries and break the supply-chain dependence on lithium, which is currently dominated by a handful of countries. Sodium-ion batteries are also safer and perform better in cold weather than lithium-ion equivalents. The consortium includes Faradion Ltd., which developed the lab technology, AGM Batteries Ltd., which will manufacture the packs, and Renault, which sets the performance targets based on market needs. The work is applied and commercial in nature—there is no fundamental science component. The immediate impact would be a more resilient, lower-cost battery supply chain for the UK automotive industry.