The first EV with a lithium-free sodium battery hits the road in January

skhayfa@lemmy.world to Technology@lemmy.world – 760 points –
The first EV with a lithium-free sodium battery hits the road in January
engadget.com
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The ocean?

Nope. Mining. Soda ash (sodium carbonate) is one of the best raw materials for these

I hope not, because salt isn't a renewable resource. And who the hell wants to fight the auto industry for something we need for food?

Sodium isn't rare in the slightest. according to Wikipedia, "Sodium is the sixth most abundant element in the Earth's crust and exists in numerous minerals such as feldspars, sodalite, and halite (NaCl)."

salt isn't going anywhere. no need to fret.

We had a shortage in Canada... but after looking into it, it appears to have been caused by a labour strike. LOL

Yes, it's abundant. But it is still a finite resource that needs to be mined/harvested, and what will that look like when the EVs are running off sodium-ion batteries?

Bit better then when we mined coal or lithium since it's so abundant we don't have to fck up whole regions for it to get to the little bit here and there. Desalination makes sense, dried death salt lakes also seems logical etc. Salt is everywhere. People are even building artificial "caves" with salt for others to go breath salty air inside.

A lot of desalinization plants just release the salty brine back out to sea, it's actually an ecological problem, so finding another use for it might convince them to capture and separate that for manufacturing uses.

We had a shortage in Canada... but after looking into it, it appears to have been caused by a labour strike. LOL

That's a capitalism problem, not a resource problem. All resources require labor to harvest, renewable or no.

Bro we will need to do desalination plants to supply people with water, there will be more than enough salt and you can't dump the salt back into the ocean anyway

Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

this is plain stupid. sodium is far far more common in the earth than lithium. if you're worried about sodium not being renewable, then by that logic you should stop using lithium batteries right now.

Yes, I understand. I already posted that I was under the impression that we have shortages of the stuff, since we had shortages in Canada. But it was due to a labour dispute, and not a lack of resources.

And yes, I think we should reduce our use of lithium batteries, or at least only use recycled lithium.