JAC Motors, a Volkswagen-backed Chinese automaker, unveiled the first mass-produced EV with a sodium-ion battery through its new Yiwei brand. Although sodium-ion battery tech has a lower density than lithium-ion, its lower costs, simpler and more abundant supplies and superior cold-weather performance could help accelerate mass EV adoption.
I’ve found people vastly overstated how much range they need. 99% of usage is in the city between home and somewhere else. 250km is perfect if the price is right.
For daily use, sure - but it completely excludes itself as an option for road trips in the US and parts of Canada. There’s a stretch of interstate road near me with nearly a 100 mile gap between service stations.
I know that this isn’t the purpose of this battery, but it’s a valid reason why a lot of people might be hesitant to buy one. Many people can’t afford multiple vehicles for different purposes. You have the car you drive to work with, and if you happen to go on a trip you just use the same thing.
Maybe 99% of use occurs within constraints that this battery can handle, but if you can only afford one vehicle, then this is still a pretty suboptimal option. That being said… it could still be cheap enough to not matter. I didn’t see any mention of price in that article.
Maybe we have to settle for suboptimal solutions from time to time to save the planet?
That’s not how car sales work. People want EVs without major downsides. Until that’s what’s available we won’t be see EVs surpass 10% market share.
I know, people are not willing to comprises for the good of the planet. That’s why we’re so fucked.
They should raise the driving age to 30. Then people would understand what a privilege driving really is.
A solution to this would be an extra expansion battery that you could buy or rent as an add-on only when needed.
…or rent a vehicle with the fuel savings from driving your EV most of the year, and skip putting a couple thousand km on your car over a long weekend.
This is what I do.
You still pay the cost of driving a car a couple thousand km though, right?
Most rental places in the states don’t charge mileage iirc
If we’re going all in with expansion packs we should add a rumble pack as well 😏
or don’t buy city car for intercity trips. Get li-ion powered cars or wait for them to make model with bigger range.
Just use Communauto for those once a quarter out of town trips.
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It seems to me that car in the article is relatively small city car. I can imagine that building bigger car with inter city travels in mind would also include an improved range.
Exactly. We have two cars, and we only need one to have any kind of range. The other is fine with 250km/150mi range, but it needs to be relatively inexpensive to buy and repair. It’ll just be for a daily commute and around-town driving, no expectation for long-distance.
It doesn’t need space for people or stuff, just 2-4 passengers is plenty. It’ll strictly be for commutes and small trips to the grocery store and whatnot, the other car can be used for larger trips.