Why is Mukesh Ambani’s big battery of sodium in the EV race?

Not a bad substitute for sodium-ion Mukesh Ambani To turn off your power-storage Gigafactory. For one thing, there is 300 times more sodium than lithium in the Earth’s crust. For another, the global adoption rate of electric vehicles is currently so high that not only lithium, but also high-grade nickel, cobalt and practically everything that goes into EV batteries are becoming scarce. BloombergNEF is predicting a five-fold jump in the appetite for metals used to make lithium-ion cells by 2030. For the first time in many years, battery packs could get more expensive in 2022.

Ambani’s Flagship Reliance Industries Limited is in the midst of an ambitious $76 billion clean-energy push. Therefore, it makes sense for them to favor a technology that is as cheap as conventional lead-acid batteries, and requires materials that are easy to source. Their price-sensitive customers in India and other emerging markets won’t mind moving sodium ions between the anode and cathode, as long as they don’t have to give up too much of lithium’s performance in the bargain.

But are they? When it comes to energy density — the amount of electrical power that can be stored per unit of weight — Ambani is hoping the gap with lithium-ion will narrow, and his money will play a role in bridging it. He’s not just pouring out £100 million for Sheffield- and Oxford-based Faradion Ltd.; He is raising an additional £25 million to accelerate commercial roll-out by the company, which employs 16 people full-time and holds 31 patents. This technology will be used at Reliance’s Battery Gigafactory in Jamnagar, Gujarat.

“If lithium is the only mainstream sport, it’s not enough – cobalt is even scarcer,” says Ashwin Kumaraswamy, venture capitalist at UK-based Murcia Asset Management plc and co-founder of Faradion. sodium, we’ve barely scratched the surface.” The startup, which has been working exclusively on sodium-ion for a decade, already claims to deliver 160-170 watt-hours per kilogram commercially, and expects to hit 200 watt-hours per kilo soon. That’s more or less the density offered by the lithium-iron-phosphate cells in Tesla’s made-in-China Model 3 standard range.

To put those numbers into perspective, when China’s contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Ltd. unveiled its sodium-ion cells last summer, the world’s largest EV battery maker said its first-generation products could produce 160 watts per kilogram. -hours, and this a basic industrial supply chain will be ready by 2023. In other words, the Ambanis are not entering a game where the Chinese have already won matches.

Nor are any other serious players waiting at home – at least not now.

Battery gigafactories are growing from Nevada to New York, Shanghai to Xian and Berlin to Budapest. But the second most populous country has seen little investment in technology. Toshiba Corp, Suzuki Motor Corp and Denso Corp have joined hands to set up a $180 million lithium battery plant in Gujarat to supply the country’s largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki India Ltd. In general, however, Indian automakers “make no plans to manufacture batteries and are likely to outsource to independent manufacturers”, according to a report by Mumbai-based brokerage Kotak Institutional Equities. The same ‘assembler’ strategy that has worked for them in the internal combustion engine vehicle space.”

This is good news for Ambani. At $300 million, the current EV storage market in the country may be small, but that won’t always be the case. When it comes to scooters, a popular means of personal transportation for the middle class, government subsidies have already made electric vehicles more affordable than gasoline Guzzlers. In 20 years, more than 70% of all two-wheelers and more than 70% of car sales will be EVs, and according to Kotak estimates, the demand for batteries will increase to $585 billion a year by 2052. The firm estimates that the potential stock-market wealth creation from batteries in India is $1 trillion. By starting investing when others are not looking, Ambani can grab a big chunk of it.

It is almost certain that the policy of the government will support Make in India storage. After all, if India doesn’t produce its own batteries, annual hard-money savings from reducing its reliance on Middle East oil – 3% – to -4% of GDP – could prove misleading. Kotak analysts wrote that the country could only “go from crude oil imports to battery imports”.

And that’s just auto. At the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government vowed to meet 50% of the country’s energy needs from non-fossil-fuel sources by 2030. To reach that goal, wind and solar power will also need storage. What’s more, those batteries will need to be carried to remote locations. Unlike lithium-ion, which is a known fire hazard, sodium-ion cells can be discharged to zero volts – making them less likely to explode in transit. For this, Reliance can benefit from Faradion’s patent. One of the Indian conglomerate’s recent battery deals, a $50 million investment in Marlboro, Massachusetts-based Ambury Inc., has a similar aim to develop expertise for the safe, economical storage of large-scale renewable energy using calcium and antimony electrodes. could.

From New Delhi’s national-security standpoint, bypassing China’s control of lithium-ion will be critical, which is the result of a large economy’s lock on raw materials, refining capacity, manufacturing and domestic demand. “Cartels of oil-producing countries held the world ransom in the 1970s. In EVs, China is reaching the point where it is developing market dominance,” says Kumaraswamy of Faradion.

Sodium, the salt of the earth, is unlikely to be the end of Ambani’s ambitions in batteries. But as a starting point, the technology has a lot to recommend for both him and India.

This story has been published without modification in text from a wire agency feed. Only the title has been changed.