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The Battery Made From Salt Has a Lithium Problem
CATL has announced billions of yuan in sodium-ion investment plans. The chemistry works. Whether the economics hold up depends on much more than cheap sodium.
Editorial note: I use AI tools to assist with research, fact-checking, and editing. The analysis, opinions, engineering interpretation, and final editorial decisions are my own.
In September 2025, Natron Energy, a California sodium-ion battery startup with a factory in Michigan, shut down.
Only a year earlier, it had announced a $1.4 billion gigafactory. Its closure notice was blunt: the board had concluded that efforts to raise enough new funding had failed. Trade-press reports also pointed to delayed UL certification, which left about $25 million in orders unfilled, and a roughly 70% fall in lithium prices that had weakened sodium-ion’s cost case.
Eight months later, the world’s largest EV battery maker went the other way. CATL filed plans to add 40 GWh of annual sodium-ion capacity in China.
Same chemistry. Opposite bets.
Natron’s cells used a different electrode chemistry and were aimed at industrial power, not cars, so its failure doesn’t settle anything about sodium-ion…
