Robin Zeng, the founder of NIO and Tesla's battery supplier Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL), said at a shareholder meeting Friday that the comp

NIO's battery supplier CATL says it will release sodium-ion batteries around July

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2021-06-18 23:00:09

Robin Zeng, the founder of NIO and Tesla's battery supplier Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL), said at a shareholder meeting Friday that the company will release sodium-ion batteries around July this year.

This means that power battery technology will see a major innovation. But with that, the price of the new batteries could be higher. Zeng said sodium-ion batteries are likely to be more expensive than lithium-ion batteries because they are a new concept.

Last year, CATL built the 21C Innovation Lab in Ningde, Fujian province, with an investment of RMB 3.3 billion to focus on research and development of next-generation batteries, including lithium metal batteries, all-solid-state batteries, and sodium-ion batteries.

Sodium-ion batteries work mainly by moving sodium ions between positive and negative electrodes, similar to lithium-ion batteries.

But because the electrode material used in sodium-ion batteries is mainly sodium, it is more abundant and cheaper than lithium.