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.
That’s a perfect range for me. If it’s relatively cheap and charges reasonably well in the winter, I’ll buy it.
We currently have two cars:
A lot of my neighbors have a similar setup because either one person doesn’t work or works at home, but they often need to use both cars simultaneously. If it’s priced well, it’ll sell well.
The main problem with existing EVs are that they either have far too little range (e.g. original Leaf w/ 70 miles range), or are way too expensive because they try to get too much range (200+ mile range). That higher range is kind of necessary because of degradation, whereas if the battery were cheaper to replace, more people would be willing to buy something with lower range and replace the battery after a few years.