Sodium-ion batteries have been in development since 1970s and the lithium-ion batteries have been in development since 1960s. Not much of a difference.

Similar deal with LCD versus other display technology: once something is dominant, a metric shitload of money is spent pushing from its practical shortcomings toward its theoretical limits. Even twenty years ago, LCDs suuucked. Plasma would save us from their high latency. OLED would save us from their low contrast. And then, uh... neither did much of anything. LCDs were just so damn cheap that consumers didn't care for much else, and manufacturers attacked the technical problems keeping them slow and dim. Nowadays - they're still not ideal. But nothing else is a drop-in replacement, because nothing else has enjoyed the same firehose of revenue-fueled R&D.

Lithium has problems. But after a couple decades as the technology for laptops and smartphones, those problems are mostly jokes about that exploding Samsung phone, and the fact gasoline still has higher density. If something can be cheaper - it will gradually disrupt and displace this highly-regarded standard.

Expect a similar outcome for RISC-V versus ARM.

Also, the battery pack for a cell phone 30 years ago was about the same volume and weight of an entire smartphone, with a capacity of about 500 mAh. They are also far cheaper if you account for inflation.

Batteries have improved incapacity by about a factor of 10 and the cost per watt-hour has reduced by about 99% in the last 30 year. All without a single advancement in the technology, apparently.

/s

You skipped Ni-MH there, that was major for not having the memory problems of Ni-Cd. We still use those in AA and AAA rechargeable batteries.

A little pedantic note, LiPo is still a type of Li-Ion (maybe I got that right)

and the bigger recent breakthrough was LFP (Lithium iron phosphate / LiFePO4)

And probably safe to call Sodium-Ion and solid state the next big phases of development

it's not just another article about a new revolutionary discovery because that's the only way to have funds?

Eh, the patent office hasn't had standards for practically for like a century, just that you describe a novel method

There's a pile of battery patents that are all game-changing but when a company decides to make a dedicated factory that's when you know shit is going down.

Well we are in dire need of grid size storage so this is excellent then.

True, but this is solid state so it may be higher density than current Lithium based batteries. But it might not beat a hypothetical lithium solid state battery. On the other hand, sodium batteries today beat out lithium in many other ways than capacity, and if those things are true for solid state then as long as there is a big enough jump in capacity due to the solid state transition then I think sodium is going to be the go-to for most uses in the future.

Huh ?

What information are you trying to convey by quoting that sentence from the article?

But the materials are more easily accessible for sodium. It's just supposed to have less capacity by volume.

Edit: that portion of the article you mentioned is talking about lithium ion

that's what fast is for.

The decarbonization of our power grid will thankfully not be up to a single technology, but a multitude which are all seeing development simultaneously. Solar is reaching for better efficiency and less harmful creation, batteries of all shapes, sizes, and concepts are popping up from everywhere. It feels more like a race now than a slow decline into uninhabitability.