[dwood_dev]

While Sodium Ion may be the future of grid batteries, it's not the present. As long as LFP is cheaper, there is no reason to go with Sodium.

This calculus will probably change in 3-5 years, but today Sodium is more expensive and therefore has little demand without some form of discount or subsidy.

The switch will be rapid once the economics make sense, but they don't yet.

[nharada]

CATL is claiming mass production of their sodium-ion batteries starts in December, with a target price of $10/kWh. If that ends up even partway true it'll completely change the economics of power storage.

[grayrest]

> CATL is claiming mass production of their sodium-ion batteries starts in December, with a target price of $10/kWh.

This got widely reported but there doesn't seem to be any source. I'll reference this video [1] to cover the claim along with a comparison to industry projections. Apologies for the video link but I don't have an article handy that addresses the topic as directly.

[1] https://youtu.be/KjiqqafD_0w?t=861

[nharada]

You're right, I can't find any primary sources for this number. Yahoo[1] reports this number and attributes it to Bloomberg NEF but I can't find an actual article from Bloomberg with this number, or any actual target number in it.

[1] https://www.yahoo.com/news/china-10-sodium-ion-battery-16505...

[bmicraft]

That's plain wrong, they have not announced that price target anywhere. There is speculation that it could be there target internally for the long term, but there is basically zero chance they'll start at that price and no guarantees they'll ever reach it.

[nharada]

You're right, I can't find any primary sources for this number. Yahoo[1] reports this number and attributes it to Bloomberg NEF but I can't find an actual article from Bloomberg with this number, or any actual target number in it.

[1] https://www.yahoo.com/news/china-10-sodium-ion-battery-16505...

[nextworddev]

CATL is just dumping

[bryanlarsen]

CATL had a profit of $2.6B last quarter on sales of $15B. That indicates they're pricing well above cost rather than below it.

[tooltalk]

dumping doesn't depend on profit or loss. Also the legal definition of dumping is less-than-the-"normal value." (see Article VI ANTI-DUMPING AND COUNTERVAILING DUTIES of GATT 1994).

But then China is a non-market-economy, so none of these rules apply in a hypothetical anti-dumping case -- ie, China's local price, or "normal value" doesn't matter.

[bryanlarsen]

A normal value for a highly competitive commodity part like a battery is about 3% above cost. CATL charges over 20% above cost. So you might have an argument that CATL has monopoly pricing power and is gouging its customers.

IOW that they're illegally charging too much, not that they are illegally charging too little.

[tooltalk]

Sure, that's not what a normal value is.

As explained, the price level or the cost of manufacture in China, the exporting country, is completely irrelevant as their local price/cost of manufacturer is artificially propped up by illegal state subsidies or other anti-market tactics to cripple foreign competition past 15 years. Again, China is a non-market-economy.

In those cases, trade regulators can use "undistorted" prices without gov't interference or use a market price in a similarly situated 3rd country as benchmark.

[nextworddev]

Western folks still don’t get how China works more than two decades after WTO lol

[nharada]

What makes you say that? I don’t know this space very well

[nextworddev]

Dumping batteries is yet another strategy to take control of global energy infrastructure and destabilize petrodollar

[nharada]

Oh yeah I get what you’re saying but is that a thing? Like CATL has had lines before that aren’t making a profit?

[Qwertious]

It's not a thing; people are just stuck in the 2000s and think that China can't beat the West technologically and therefore must be cheating.