A Chinese automaker has begun road-testing an electric vehicle powered by a sodium-ion battery, a development that could significantly alter the economics of affordable electric transportation and reduce the global auto industry’s dependence on lithium, cobalt, and other scarce minerals that have defined the battery supply chain for more than a decade.
JAC Motors, a state-owned automaker based in Hefei, China, has started testing a compact electric car equipped with a sodium-ion battery pack developed by HiNa Battery Technology, according to a report from MSN News. The vehicle, based on JAC’s Yiwei subcompact platform, represents one of the first real-world applications of sodium-ion technology in a passenger car, moving the chemistry from laboratory curiosity to potential commercial viability.
Why Sodium Matters: Abundance, Cost, and Geopolitics
The appeal of sodium-ion batteries is straightforward: sodium is one of the most abundant elements on Earth, found in vast quantities in seawater and salt deposits on every continent. Lithium, by contrast, is concentrated in a handful of countries — primarily Australia, Chile, and Argentina — and its extraction has been dogged by environmental concerns, water usage disputes, and volatile pricing. Lithium carbonate prices surged past $80,000 per metric ton in late 2022 before crashing below $15,000 in 2024, a level of volatility that has made long-term planning difficult for automakers and battery manufacturers alike.
Sodium-ion batteries promise to sidestep many of these problems. The raw materials are cheaper and more geographically dispersed, which means supply chains are less vulnerable to geopolitical disruption. Sodium-ion cells can also use aluminum current collectors on both the anode and cathode sides, replacing the copper foil required in lithium-ion cells — a substitution that further reduces cost. Industry analysts estimate that sodium-ion batteries could eventually be manufactured at 20% to 40% less cost per kilowatt-hour than their lithium-ion equivalents, though current production volumes remain too small to realize those savings at scale.
The Technical Trade-Offs: Range Versus Affordability
Sodium-ion technology does come with significant compromises. The energy density of current sodium-ion cells — roughly 120 to 160 watt-hours per kilogram — lags well behind lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries, which typically deliver 160 to 200 Wh/kg, and far behind nickel-manganese-cobalt (NMC) cells, which can exceed 250 Wh/kg. That gap translates directly into reduced driving range. The JAC Yiwei test vehicle is expected to offer a range of approximately 250 kilometers (155 miles) on a single charge, according to reports, making it suitable for urban commuting but inadequate for long-distance travel.
However, proponents argue that range limitations matter less than critics suggest for a large segment of the market. In China, where the average daily commute is under 40 kilometers, a 250-kilometer range covers the vast majority of daily driving needs with ample margin. For consumers in second- and third-tier Chinese cities — and in developing markets across Southeast Asia, Africa, and South America — the price of an electric vehicle matters far more than whether it can drive 500 kilometers without stopping. If sodium-ion batteries can bring the sticker price of an EV below 50,000 yuan (roughly $7,000), they could open up electrification to hundreds of millions of consumers who are currently priced out of the market.
HiNa Battery and China’s Sodium-Ion Industrial Push
HiNa Battery Technology, the company supplying the battery cells for the JAC test vehicle, was founded in 2017 as a spinoff from the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Physics. The company has been among the most aggressive players in commercializing sodium-ion chemistry, and it opened what it described as the world’s first gigawatt-hour-scale sodium-ion battery production line in 2023. HiNa’s cells use a layered oxide cathode and a hard carbon anode, a configuration that has emerged as the leading architecture for automotive-grade sodium-ion batteries.
HiNa is far from alone. CATL, the world’s largest battery manufacturer, unveiled its first-generation sodium-ion battery in 2021 and has been integrating the technology into its product roadmap. BYD, which dominates China’s EV market, has also been investing in sodium-ion research. Smaller firms like Natron Energy in the United States and Faradion (now owned by India’s Reliance Industries) are pursuing the technology as well, though none have matched the pace of Chinese companies in moving toward mass production. China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has explicitly included sodium-ion batteries in its technology development plans, signaling state-level support for the chemistry.
Cold Weather Performance: An Unexpected Advantage
One area where sodium-ion batteries may actually outperform lithium-ion alternatives is cold-weather operation. Lithium-ion batteries suffer significant capacity loss and slower charging in sub-zero temperatures, a problem that has frustrated EV owners from Norway to northern China. Sodium-ion cells have demonstrated better capacity retention at low temperatures, maintaining more than 90% of their room-temperature capacity at minus 20 degrees Celsius, according to data published by HiNa and corroborated by independent testing. This characteristic could make sodium-ion EVs particularly attractive in cold-climate markets.
The safety profile of sodium-ion batteries also compares favorably to lithium-ion technology. Sodium-ion cells are generally more thermally stable, meaning they are less prone to the thermal runaway events that have caused high-profile lithium-ion battery fires. Additionally, sodium-ion cells can be discharged to zero volts for safe transport and storage — a property that lithium-ion cells do not share, as deep discharge can cause irreversible damage to lithium-based chemistries.
What This Means for the Global Auto Industry
The JAC Motors test is a signal, not a finished product. Road testing is an early step in a validation process that typically takes 18 to 24 months before a vehicle is deemed ready for commercial sale. Questions remain about cycle life — how many charge-discharge cycles a sodium-ion battery can endure before its capacity degrades unacceptably — and about whether manufacturing costs will fall as quickly as proponents predict. The technology must also prove itself under the punishing conditions of real-world driving: extreme heat, potholes, fast charging, and the accumulated wear of years of daily use.
But the strategic implications are significant. Western automakers, already struggling to compete with Chinese manufacturers on EV pricing, could find themselves facing an even wider cost gap if sodium-ion batteries deliver on their promise. Chinese companies have spent years building vertically integrated supply chains for lithium-ion batteries, and they are now applying the same playbook to sodium-ion technology. If sodium-ion cells reach price points of $40 to $50 per kilowatt-hour — a target that some Chinese manufacturers have publicly discussed — the cost of a basic EV battery pack could fall below $2,500, fundamentally changing the economics of entry-level electric vehicles.
The Broader Race for Battery Chemistry Dominance
The sodium-ion push is part of a broader diversification of battery chemistries that is reshaping the energy storage industry. Solid-state batteries, lithium-sulfur cells, and iron-air batteries are all under active development, each with distinct advantages and drawbacks. But sodium-ion technology is arguably closer to commercial deployment than any of these alternatives, precisely because it relies on manufacturing processes and equipment that are similar to those used for lithium-ion production. Existing lithium-ion factories can, in many cases, be retooled for sodium-ion production with relatively modest capital expenditure.
For automakers outside China, the question is whether to invest in sodium-ion research independently, partner with Chinese battery suppliers, or focus on other chemistries entirely. European and American battery startups have attracted significant venture capital funding, but none have yet demonstrated the ability to manufacture sodium-ion cells at the scale and cost that Chinese firms are targeting. The risk for Western industry is not just that Chinese EVs will be cheaper — it is that the underlying battery technology powering those vehicles will be produced almost exclusively in China, replicating the supply chain dependencies that policymakers in Washington and Brussels have spent the past several years trying to reduce.
A Technology That Could Redefine What “Affordable” Means
The JAC Motors sodium-ion test vehicle is, by itself, a modest development — a small car with limited range being driven around test tracks in eastern China. But it represents the tangible beginning of a technology transition that the battery industry has been anticipating for years. If sodium-ion batteries can deliver even a fraction of their theoretical cost advantages at commercial scale, they will not merely compete with lithium-ion technology in the budget EV segment — they will define it.
The next 12 to 18 months will be telling. Watch for announcements from CATL and BYD regarding their own sodium-ion vehicle programs, for pricing data from HiNa’s production lines, and for any moves by Western automakers to secure sodium-ion supply agreements. The chemistry of salt and carbon may lack the glamour of solid-state breakthroughs or silicon anodes, but it may prove to be the technology that finally makes electric vehicles accessible to the mass market — not just in China, but globally.