European battery manufacturer Northvolt has successfully developed sodium-ion batteries and plans to commercialize them in the energy storage field. On November 21, Swedish battery company Northvolt announced that it had developed a state-of-the-art sodium-ion battery with an energy density of over 160 Wh/kg. However, the company did not disclose other technical indicators such as the cycle life of the battery. Sodium-ion batteries use sodium salts as electrode materials. Compared to lithium-ion batteries, sodium-ion batteries have advantages such as abundant resource reserves, low cost, and fast charging, but they lag behind lithium-ion batteries in energy density.

Northvolt, founded in 2016, is the most well-known local battery manufacturer in Europe, and has received investments from Volkswagen Group, Goldman Sachs Asset Management and other well-known institutions. According to Northvolt's plan, its first generation of sodium-ion batteries will mainly be used in the field of energy storage, and it plans to release higher energy density sodium-ion batteries in the future, so as to achieve application in the field of electric vehicles. Its CEO and co-founder Peter Carlson told the Financial Times that the new technology of sodium-ion batteries may be worth tens of billions of dollars, as it opens up the energy storage market in the Middle East, Africa and India. According to Carlson's estimation, the order volume of energy storage batteries in the next decade may be larger than the current power battery market. Northvolt said that this type of sodium-ion battery is safer, more cost-effective and sustainable than traditional ternary batteries or lithium iron phosphate batteries. Ternary batteries and lithium iron phosphate batteries are the two main types of lithium batteries. At the same time, Northvolt's raw materials for producing sodium-ion batteries do not include lithium, nickel, cobalt and other minerals, but choose iron and sodium with richer reserves.

According to Northvolt, the sodium-ion battery it developed uses Prussian blue cathode material and hard carbon as the anode. This technology line is consistent with the first generation of sodium-ion batteries released by CATL (300750.SZ). CATL released the product in July 2021, with an energy density of 160 Wh/kg. It plans to basically form an industrial chain of sodium-ion batteries this year. CATL also disclosed at that time that the energy density of its next-generation sodium-ion battery will exceed 200Wh/kg, but the product has not yet been released.

According to the positive electrode material, in addition to the choice of Prussian white (Prussian blue), sodium-ion batteries also include two major technical routes: layered oxide and polyanion. Another domestic battery giant BYD (002594.SZ) mainly focuses on the latter two technologies. At a sodium-ion battery forum held in July this year, Yin Xiaoqiang, general manager of BYD's energy storage and new battery division, said that the polyanion system sodium-ion battery has the advantages of long cycle life, low cost, high safety, and is suitable for large-scale energy storage. The layered oxide system sodium-ion battery has the advantages of high energy density, low cost, fast charging, strong low-temperature performance, and is suitable for A00 or A0 class passenger cars, two-wheeled vehicles and other fields with low requirements for endurance mileage. "We plan to achieve the energy density of 180 Wh/kg and the cycle times of 6000 for the layered oxide system sodium-ion battery by 2025, and the energy density of 150 Wh/kg and the cycle times of 10000 for the polyanion system sodium-ion battery, which are equal to those of lithium iron phosphate batteries," Yin Xiaoqiang revealed at that time.

The Financial Times reported that Northvolt plans to provide customers with samples of sodium-ion batteries next year and achieve mass production by 2030. The company will build a dedicated production base for this purpose. Northvolt currently has four factories for the production of lithium batteries.

Compared to Northvolt's just released, domestic battery companies such as CATL and Farasis Energy (688567.SH) are close to the mass production of sodium-ion batteries. CATL announced in April this year that it will launch its sodium-ion battery on Chery models. In the 372nd batch of "Road Motor Vehicle Manufacturers and Product Announcements" (hereinafter referred to as "Product Announcements") released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in June this year, a Chery new energy model equipped with sodium-ion batteries has been included. The A00-class pure electric sedan, with a maximum speed of 100 kilometers per hour, uses the sodium-ion battery from CATL. The Jiangling New Energy A0-class pure electric sedan, which was also announced at the same time, is also equipped with Farasis Energy's sodium-ion battery. The maximum speed of this model is also 100 kilometers per hour. The two models listed on the Product Announcements mean that their mass production has entered the countdown state.

BYD has not announced the progress of the installation of sodium-ion batteries, but it has not slowed down its pace in capacity layout. On the 18th of this month, BYD and Huaihai Holding Group completed a signing agreement, planning to invest 10 billion yuan in Xuzhou, Jiangsu to build a sodium-ion battery project with an annual production capacity of 30 GWh, with the goal of becoming the world's largest supplier of sodium-ion batteries for micro-cars.

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