Whooo Doogies, battery roundup!

 "Man, I thought you just beat the whole battery thing to death recently, what gives?"

Couple things: It' a fast changing field, and we haven't written an overview since As Go the Batteries, So Goes the Nation in Sept.2022 [which also contains a glossary].  One of the predictions in there is we might be at $50/KWh for LFP type Lithium batteries (at the cell level) by the end of 2024. There's doubt about making that one, at least by late '24, so some kind of update seems required. The competing Sodium Ion playbook is also clearer now and we have more information about alternate processes like solid state and/or Silicon (instead of Graphite) as a major cell component.
We'll also go into more about our previous thesis that it may not matter as much as you might think.

Do remain aware that "Great new awesome battery ideas that everyone should invest in" has been a regular meme since at least 1903 so one should rightly take the latest announcements with at least some small measure of skepticism. We strongly believe that Sodium Ion technologies will be in serious production by late 2026, if not exactly taking over, and Solid State batteries should be sorted out during '26-'27 and maybe production-worthy by 2028.
Also note that much of what's presented here is actually a condensed version of literally hours of material provided by The Limiting Factor YouTube channel. Jordan totally rocks. However, his level of detail and your level of required detail may differ, thus this post. Not that we're the soul of brevity ;-)

Edited excerpt from The Limiting Factor's posts. Click to expand.

* These are averages across the industry, from multiple sources, over time and reflect manufacturing costs and are generally at the pack level.

There are a whole series of these graphics, 2023, 2025, 2027(?), 2030 but since the extrapolation between them is roughly linear we only included two.
Also note that our previous post compared costs at the cell level, his projections are at the pack level, a better metric in our opinion, especially as applied to cars and electric-grid storage uses. Do keep in mind that the IRS bill in Congress allows $35/KWh in credits for cell production and another $10/KWh in credits for pack-level production, at least for U.S. battery manufacturing with content from trade partners. ...which goes aways toward explaining the rush to establish battery manufacturing in the USA, just as was intended. That 'So Goes the Nation' thing earlier was not complete hyperbole. 
So, the average 60KW car battery pack could see $2700 in direct subsidies to the manufacturer as they source, manufacture and package their own batteries.  ...subject, obviously to the winds of political change.
Aside: Don't pay attention to China being demonized for subsidizing their EV production. The U.S. and Europe do it too, though not as early nor as much.  And, remain aware that Ford, GM/Chevy and Tesla's ongoing LFP battery plans all depend, at least somewhat, on licenses from CATL of China.

OK so looking at the graphic there's a couple of obvious points. Batteries are going to get cheaper over time. High Nickel/Cobalt content cells will continue to beat the snot out of the other chemistries currently available for high performance/low weight applications, at significant (and environmental) cost.
The others will achieve rough parity with each other. Yes, one chemistry may be able to save you $900 on a full pack or last 30 years instead of 20 or fit into a just slightly smaller space. However, absent the marketing machine getting in your face about how their battery is 'The Best Ever' these are not gigantic differences on a "You MUST buy THIS car!" level. Also remember the IRS bill subsidies, they may remove that $900 difference, or be repealed by the next administration. We just don't know.

What might make a difference is oncoming technologies like Solid State Batteries (still probably based on Lithium) which might eventually gain you 2X on packaging density and maybe eventually on cost 

-or- (and?)  swapping graphite (the 'biggest' component in current batteries) for some sort of nano-scale silicon compound already gains 5X-10X in the lab, at a cost of Much reduced cycle life. Will either or both of these become the Next Big Thing? We can hope, but it's a better than even money bet that neither will be deployed at scale in five years. By 2028-2030? eh, maybe.

Safety: Oddly enough, while 'safety' is very important from the user's perspective, it's almost more important to the manufacturer of an EV. Yes you don't want to get a 'bad rep' for your cars catching on fire (just ask Chevy!) but a safer battery cell vastly reduces the amount, weight and cost of the measures you have to take when building the battery cells into a battery pack. You save bucks on every car you build.

If Lithium Iron (LFP) cells are say 2X-5X safer than 'regular' Lithium Ion cells (not exactly, but close) and say if Sodium cells were 2X safer than LFP than it stands to reason that the expense and weight of packaging them into a car, with reasonable safety margins, would be less. In all cases you're packing an enormous amount of energy around under your vehicle, hit it hard enough and arcing/burning may occur. Still, even the worst case is still WAY better than carrying around a tank of explosive liquid, er, gasoline.

Keep in mind that if you exclude all the 'manufacturing defect, replaced under warranty.' potential fire cases (Chevy again) then the odds of your EV burning down are already much less than gas cars. If you're not worried about your gas car burning, then you should be even less worried about your next EV.
...well, until the media get's ahold of it and blasts Fear, Uncertanty and Doubt in your face to sell their product/your attention.

Why It Doesn't Matter: Ah, finally the meat of the matter, er, post.

     "How can you say that, especially after going on and on about the differences?"

As economies of scale get rev'd-up, materials sources come online and the odd subsidy or two are applied, cost parity with fossil fuel vehicles will not only happen, it is already here.  

The average gas car is now over $40,000. EV's from Nissan, GM and Tesla are already under $40K -WITHOUT- rebates/subsidies. Chevy and Nissan have models under $30K before subsidies. Tesla's small SUV, the Model Y (currently the most popular car in the world by unit sales volume) will be under that ($40K) line within months.

     "But you can get a cheap basic gas car for under $25K!"

And, with the Federal point of sale credit the basic Chevy (or Nissan?)  is $23K (yes, assumes fed.credit, which you don't have to pay back even if you don't make enough to generate that much tax liability) 

And yes, that credit will go away.

That same credit makes a Model Y cost $36K. Yes, there are fancier 4WD big battery versions of that which cost more, but 'more' in this case is right at the current average selling price for gas cars in the U.S.

So the point is that all those giant expenses that used to make battery electric cars cost 50% more and be 'lunatic fringe' players are already gone. That part of the story is pretty much over, though you couldn't tell it from major media outlets. The battle now over which battery is better or which motor is better or which lasts longer or which costs $500 less to produce, well, that's all fiddling around in the margins. Yes the car that costs $4000 more will last 15 years rather than 12, or go 40 miles further between 'fill-ups' but that's all minor 'product line differentiation' that car manufacturers have been selling for over 100 years. All the major players in the U.S have agreed to use the same charging standard going forward, (NACS, the Tesla charging connector ) so that's not going to be a big selling point either.

Some countries are already approaching a 50% adoption rate for EVs.  Not the U.S.   Duh.
We're not saying that the battles are over, they obviously are not, but the battle is not 'does it work' it's now public perceptions and protectionism and clueless politics. It's highly probable that Ford and GM will need bailouts (or rescue from bankruptcy) before 2030 'cause no way will they win on a level playing field. If the Chinese are let in, even indirectly via Mexico or Canada, well, they are already really good at producing reliable EVs for -well- under $20K.

The other 'next battle' is also pretty much won, although few seem to realize it. The competition isn't even a little bit close. Will Ford will announce that they're licensing Tesla's Full Self Driving (FSD) technology stack? (or more likely: do it quietly) If so, GM will probably follow suit. With no viable competitor they aren't going to have many options. Having just done the deal to get access to 15,000 Tesla fast charging stations, and Tesla having been very careful to be scrupulously fair on those deals, Ford and GM are unlikely to put up a big fight, but that deal is far from done. A whole lotta things could go wrong. Elon seems adept at messing things up so this is very much 'up in the air.'
Since Congress Critters will almost certainly find some way to keep access to that technology away from the Chinese it may be the only real selling point difference they have available.

May you live in interesting times... ;-)

Cheap cheap. Tesla for Easter?

Cheap cheap is not normally the sound you associate with a new Tesla. However;

New mascots, Cheap & cheep

We're a little more sensitive than most about the cost of transportation.

This fact was highlighted by the last couple days of driving ye ol'e gas guzzler* back and forth to the dealer that has apparently cornered the market for ex-Hertz Tesla's in Oregon. It's a bit over 100 miles there, and a round trip to/from costs nearly $50 in gas. In the EV it would run around $5 based on our current home electric rate. It's not quite 10X, 23 cents/mi. vs 2.6 cents/mi. but pretty close.

Those poor souls who actually waste their time following this blog know that a recent post gets into the current pricing of new and used Teslas. This was a boring topic until recently when Hertz set off a small tactical nuclear device in the middle of the used Tesla market by dumping a significant fraction of their stock of Tesla Model 3's (and their CEO) into a used car market that was, shall we say, somewhat unprepared.

Broken news!: Hertz announced in their Q1 earnings statement that they'll be adding another 10,000 2022 and 2023 Teslas to the 10,000 remaining (to be sold) that they plan on selling during the remainder of 2024. Deals on used Teslas aren't fading out anytime soon.

[Do be aware that the rule-making for the Federal Used EV Credit makes mention of the fact that it applies to $25K and under cars from two model years ago. Elsewhere they reference "Over two years old." and since some of the 2023 Teslas were manufactured in 2022, do they qualify? We don't know.]

Current Tesla owners are aghast as the worth of their trade-in dropped 20% or more in a couple months. To be fair, the big price slide on all used cars was already in progress, but the EV side of things REALLY took it in the shorts. One person's problem is another person's opportunity. ...and boy are we taking advantage of that.

A cursory overview of the previous post; had us looking at the new 2024 'Refreshed' Tesla Model 3, which we both really Really like. After all costs, fees, taxes and rebates/credits were applied it penciled out to around $36K. New 2024 Model Y, non-refreshed, not quite as nice, worked out to $32K. Tesla of course wants to preserve the illusion of high used-Tesla prices, so their used units from 2021 or 2022 had prices very close to the new ones, after rebates.
Uh, NO, in fact, Heck No!

Note that we're in an unusual financial situation compared to most of the country, being relatively low income and in a state that has good EV Rebates so the prices we see may differ from yours. YMMV.
You might also have noticed we were looking at Hertz Used Car Sales at a variety of different locations around the country. For about three weeks they had some pretty good deals, but those sold off rapidly, plus they started jacking up the prices.

For us, two factors play into this:
The Federal Used EV Credit is only applicable to dealer sales that invoice below $25K. So when some jackass prices a bunch of their stock at $25,500 it doesn't cost $500 more, it costs $4500 more. You'd think they'd be brighter than that, but apparently not. "Pricing is automated, we have no control!" was the bleating noise offered up by several Hertz dealers. There are a number (20? 25?) 2023 Tesla Model 3's available in Florida that only have 15k-22K miles on them for around $27K. This is probably fair pricing, just not useful to us.
The other factor is that the Oregon Rebate ($2500 new, $5000 new/used for lower income folks) doesn't get turned 'on' until April 3rd, so even an amazing deal right now doesn't look so hot when you give up $5K. 
Fortunately we're patient ... ish.

We of course contacted the Oregon Hertz sales folks first. Home town heros, Yay! ...except gotta say, I don't know if they just aren't in the game or if someone above them is only feeding them the high priced offerings (and few at that) regardless we stopped looking there and broadened the horizons to include Hertz elsewhere, and other dealers who have bought the outpouring of ex-Hertz units.

As we waited, and waited, for the Oregon Rebate to take effect a curious thing started to happen. Searches would turn up more and more stock of Teslas at a pair of Oregon VW dealerships. 

"Hey, doesn't VW have their own EV's? Maybe these are trade-ins." 

Nope, Car-Fax says they're ex-rentals.
Turns out the two dealers are actually owned by the same folks and someone there was smart enough to recognize that Hertz wasn't doin'Jack with their cars in Oregon and that they can get a bunch of the ex-Hertz stock for cheap. Between the two dealerships there were like 16 units last time their web page refreshed. Not all of them were under $25K, but several were. 

Yep, that'll do. 2022 Model 3, 70K miles, under $24K

OK, Ok, it's not the preferred color (white) and those cool looking but inefficient and ride-like-a-brick wheels aren't ideal, and it has about 30K miles more than we'd like. However: $15,870!

Yep, that's what we're scheduled to fork over next Wednesday morning. (April 3rd)

Breaking that unbelievable number down: Bit under $24K, add fees and $89.21 in state taxes (woo ! )

and subtract $4K in Federal (used) credits and $5K in Oregon rebate and there we are.

"It must be a terrible car to go for so little, and 70K miles?, who buys that?"

Well, there is a couple rock chips in the hood, the 'not real leather' interior has a couple bubbles on the interior door handle and steering wheel, and the trunk doesn't close smoothly, oh, and one of the rear seatbelts (middle) has a fault. But that's it for problems we could find. Drives great, minimal wind and tire noise, much better than we expected.  If it's been 'rental abused' there's no sign of it excepting the trunk lid. Guess is that a number of renters didn't know the location (or existance) of the button to close the power trunklid, and just forced it closed. Probably dozens of times.
Some mis-alignment may occur.
As for the miles, (and frequent supercharger usage, we assume) this has the CATL LFP battery cells in it, our vote for the best in the world, especially in terms of longevity/robustness, except in very cold (under 0.deg.F, -18.C) which we don't see much of. Calculating from the recent charge information on the screen, it looks like around 96% of the original/theoretical capacity is still available, or put another way, 4% degradation in two years, 70K+ miles. Not bad. This particular version of motor/drivetrain has reportedly made it well over 200K miles quite a number of times. There's also reports of failures, mostly clustered in early life, or with lots more miles on. It still has almost 30K miles of the factory battery/drivetrain warranty available on it so this isn't a big concern right now.
OTOH;  We'll blow through the remaining warranty in less than two years (based on miles) so we'll see how we feel about it then. Odds are good that more writing will occur.

Edit:  More later after we get's it.

*The guzzler actually gets almost 20MPG, which isn't terrible for a 20 year old towing-capable vehicle, but even with that said, paying ten times as much for each mile gets old fast. We would be driving the Leaf, but we've used up all the 45K miles on that Lease, a month early. Bummer.

Sodium batteries? If? When?

As long term readers surely know by now we've been 'deep in the weeds' delving into the details on EV battery trends for awhile. Our big post on lithium batteries gets updated every so often and is still pretty much on target today, and the somewhat inflated title is more appropriate than ever.

As go the Batteries, So Goes the Nation!

And as you might imagine it's still worth a read, this post here assumes you're pretty much aware of all that stuff. A great overview, absent the (most of) the Sodium discussion is on Youtube with The Limiting Factor: on pack and packaging (and LFP) issues. IMHO Jordan is the best at this type of video.

And more appropriately focused on this future, NA, LFP, Solid, also from The Limiting Factor Youtube.

EDIT Early 2026: This is playing out pretty much as advertised. NA (Sodium Ion) batteries ARE in commercial production and ARE available in actual production vehicles, at least in China.
One unforeseen wrinkle in this is the crash in Lithium prices. Refined Lithium Carbonate underwent a 90% price drop from late 2023 to late 2025. There is still a price difference, but it's not as pronounced. This has removed much of the largest advantage for Sodium based batteries (they're still better at low temperatures) and seems to have slowed the enormous investment required to bring Sodium based battery factories online.
So far, partially as a result, Sodium BEV's are not as yet significantly cheaper than their LFP brethren although only slightly less performant. Obviously this may change as the technologies advance, but are unlikely (see below) to have truly significant impact on overall costs in the near term (3-5 yr.) future. We still believe that NA is nearly ideal for House and Grid-Scale grid-tied energy storage solutions, assuming a significant price difference remains.

All these battery types depend heavily on Graphite as a very significant component in their production. You don't hear much about how that market has become dominated by China.
Since that is less of a factor in most on-coming solid state battery designs, some of which are in low volume commercial production now, you should see that as a significant factor in the future. Since most solid state designs are targeted at lower weight/higher density uses, and Lithium has much higher energy density, most current solid state battery development is Lithium-based. End EDIT.

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Although there's not much popular awareness yet, the press that covers battery trends and technologies has recently been touting Sodium (Na) batteries as being the next big thing over Lithium (NMC, NCA and LFP) type cells. This isn't all hype. Sodium based batteries will almost certainly be a factor within a couple years.  And it's still possible that solid state batteries (almost certainly Lithium based) will win out over both of these.
However, as usual (Gotta grab those headlines!!) it's been a little over-hyped. Much of the noise has said or implied that suddenly EV batteries will cost half as much. We may believe that the "Half as Much" headlines are going to prove accurate over time, but that will also likely prove true for Lithium based batteries as well. Sodium may drive costs down somewhat, but are likely to have much less effect on EV prices than what's being touted. Let's look at some numbers.

A few assumptions:  ...and yes we know prices are changing, but the overall ratios should be valid.
Lithium Carbonate raw battery material currently costs around $20/Kg in industrial quantities.
A mid size car uses around 50Kg of Lithium. (Tesla 'Long Range' and other battery-equivalent vehicles closer to 60Kg.)
Refined Sodium, made suitable for EV batteries costs roughly 10% as much.

So looked at on the face of it $20x50Kg = $1000 and if Sodium costs 90% less that's a savings of $900.
Yay, we're saved!! $900 off your next $35,000+ car. That's OVER 2% OFF!
Even if we're off by 2X the thought still holds.
Which is not nothing, but hardly half off, and of course it's not that simple.

The inconvenient truths: Energy actually usable by the car 'drives' all of this.
The best currently available Lithium batteries have 15%-20% better energy density than the oncoming champion, Lithium Iron Phosphate (LFP) batteries [which also have no Nickel or Cobalt in them].
Those same 'best' Lithium batteries have 100% better energy density than current Sodium batteries, and so LFP cells are around 80% better.
Yes both the LFP and Sodium cells are improving over time, but all of them are improving, at different rates...

The cost of the 'other materials' that make up a battery and the manufacturing processes/costs end up being roughly equal on a per cell basis, but you need considerably more Sodium cells to store equivalent energy. 
When you account for the disparity in size and weight, and the cost of making and packaging more cells the current (actually in production now) Sodium batteries are actually behind on costs overall on a per-equivalent-vehicle basis.  Will that change? Of course it will.
Aggregating all the noise and announcements about Sodium batteries makes it a reasonably good bet that they will improve by 50% or so on a cost and density basis over the next three-four years. LFP cells will probably improve by 20%-30% over the same period. That should put them on a nearly even footing except that the size and weight of the Sodium based battery will still almost certainly not be completely competitive.

Reliability: Part of the reason we're comparing Sodium Ion batteries here with Lithium Iron Phosphate is because they are in fact comparable and should see by far the biggest growth over the next half decade. LFP is already poised to out produce the older NMC/NCA chemistries. Yes this plays into the reliability discussion:
A current 300 mi. range capable EV probably has NMC or NCA Lithium Ion batteries in it. Assuming you're looking to retain 80% of that range over it's 'life' it should survive 800-1500 full charge (equivalent) cycles.  That's 250K-350K miles. Are you keeping *your* cars out to 350,000 miles? Huh, maybe not... ;-)
An LFP based car with an equivalent size/weight battery pack may do 260 miles, but based on current estimates will survive 2000+ full charge equivalent cycles (or more!) so that's at least 500K miles. ...and probably much more. [Tesla says they'e producing million mile capable cars now. Hard to prove.]
Who knows how it will actually work out, but the Sodium folks are throwing around 5000 cycle life type numbers. So for an equivalent size/weight we're talking a 200-230 mile range, maybe a Million mile battery? 

All this is talking primarily about cycle-life. The number of battery charge-discharge cycles it can live through before reaching 20% degradation (80% remaining usability.)  As that number gets better and better you have to consider the inevitable time based chemical breakdown that occurs (at different rates) for all battery chemistries. Each manufacturer's quality control and materials choices will have large impact here, so you may not be able to make generalized assumptions for each battery type. Will Sodium be the winner? That may depend more on the manufacturing choices made to drive the costs down than on inherent advantages of the type of cell. Keep in mind that it is not in a car manufacturer's best interest to make a car that lasts 20 years, even if the battery is capable of it.

If we ignore the single outlier (Chevy Bolt LG Batteries boo-boo) you'll see in our previous coverage that the failure rate for EV batteries is already well below 1%/yr, and improving rapidly. Teslas are already below 0.5%. While it's possible that the improvements in LFP and Sodium will impact this in a positive manner, it seems just as probable that the rush to reduce costs could have the opposite effect. Regardless, 'big improvements' that push the needle by 0.01% are not going to have any real effect on people's lives, absent bragging rights by the manufacturer.

Safety:  Despite what the media would have you believe, EV's already catch on fire LESS per mile traveled than gas cars do. LFP batteries catch on fire roughly a fifth as much (and are less nasty when they do). Now while Sodium based batteries may well be even safer (anything with that much energy in it presents -some- fire risk) we're once again so far down in the low percentages that it makes little practical difference. ...absent Media Coverage and thus public perception.
Don't forget that EV's are overall safer than gas cars (and Teslas lead by a considerable margin in this) and that we don't have a good grasp of the trade-offs that a bigger heavier (sodium) battery may bring. Keeping in mind that a well designed heavier car may do better in some types of crashes than a well designed lighter car, but the lighter car will almost certainly avoid more accidents. How do you account for the crashes that didn't happen?

Summation:
As usual, the answer is 'We don't know the answer' or 'It depends.'
The main takeaway from current EV's (especially Teslas) is "Don't Worry About It."  

Seriously, it's gotten good enough that random happenstance and changes in your life are much more likely to cause you to change vehicles than the battery life in your next EV. Even if you're in that 5% or whatever that sees a failure there's 50/50 odds it'll be covered by the 100-120K mi. warranties they have on those things. Hey, you may reach 200K miles and have a battery failure, then you have a decision to make: $10-15K for a new battery or $35K for a new(er?) car. Hey, choose wisely, but it's not like you didn't get significant value out of that first 200K mi. on a per dollar basis.
The other 'as usual' point is that they are getting cheaper over time and that will probably continue (BYD is making under $15K cars in China that are pretty good right now) but remember that waiting forever buys you no advantages right now.