Lithium –ion batteries are used everywhere, be it a smartphone or a Tesla Inc car. But Asia’s richest man is backing on a technology that’s as cheap as traditional lead-acid batteries.
Sodium-ion is not a bad choice for Mukesh Ambani to kick off his power–storage gigafactory. Firstly the earth’s crust has 300 times more sodium than lithium. Secondly, since electric vehicles are so well adopted globally that practically anything that fits well in EV battery is getting scarce, be it high-grade nickel, cobalt or lithium. BloombergNEF predicted a five-fold rise in the hunger for metals used in the making of lithium-ion cells by 2030.
As far as energy density is concerned- the amount of electrical power that can be stored per unit weight, Ambani hopes, the gap with lithium-ion will get narrower and his bid money will play a major role in bridging it. Ambani has put down a hefty sum of 100 million pounds for Sheffield- and Oxford-based Faradion Ltd., and an additional 25 million pounds to accelerate commercial roll-out by the company which holds 16 patents and where 16 people are employed on fulltime basis.
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Technology is a useful servant, but a dangerous master, it was rightly said. Electronic devices have grown into an inevitable part of our daily lives.
