Sodium has been helping clear winter roads for more than a century. When combined with chlorine, it forms sodium chloride, or road salt, which remains one of the most common materials used to control ice on highways. Now, sodium may have another role in winter operations by helping improve cold-weather battery performance.
Clarios, along with Swedish sodium-ion battery developer Altris and European battery manufacturer InoBat, has validated sodium-ion battery cold-cranking performance at temperatures as low as –40 degrees Fahrenheit. The companies announced the latest results earlier this month, saying the testing advances their sodium-ion program from technology validation toward pilot-scale learning and small-series production readiness.
“The latest validation results mark an important step forward in our sodium-ion roadmap,” said Federico Morales-Zimmermann, VP and GM for global OEM customers, products and engineering at Clarios. “Sodium-ion is becoming a commercially relevant technology pathway for future low-voltage and high-power applications.”
The latest testing builds on results the company announced in January, when the company said prototype sodium-ion cells demonstrated cold-start capability down to –13 degree Fahrenheit. At the time, Clarios also announced an expanded partnership with Altris, collaboration with InoBat on prototype cell assembly, and plans to launch serial production of low-voltage sodium-ion batteries before the end of the decade at a dedicated European or U.S. facility.
Clarios plans to invest $6 billion towards its U.S. manufacturing to acclerate innovation. Next-generation technologies, including the Sodium-ion cells, account for $1 billion of that total investment. It also includes energy storage for AI and data centers.
The sodium-ion cells are being developed for low-voltage and high-power applications, including automotive, heavy-duty, and off-highway vehicles, with the latest tests including internal testing as well as customer evaluations across automotive, commercial, and intralogistics applications. Clarios said feedback from those evaluations has helped refine application requirements and confirm the relevance of the current cell design.
The next phase will use InoBat’s Volta facility in Slovakia, which combines research and development, testing and small-scale production capabilities.
The chemistry also could offer supply-chain advantages. Altris said its Prussian White cathode material uses no lithium, nickel, or cobalt, while Clarios and its partners are pursuing localized production in Western markets.
