Make better decisions on the sodium-ion battery market

Sodium-ion has reached mass production in China, while Western makers still struggle to build their own cells.

We've found a lot of interesting signals. For example, in February 2026, CATL and Changan unveiled what they called the first mass-produced passenger car running on sodium-ion cells, with a launch planned for mid-2026. In July, Peak Energy picked Sacramento for America's first sodium-ion grid battery plant, which will assemble cells made in China. And in September, France's Tiamat put its own factory on hold after failing to close the financing. China is scaling the chemistry, and the rest of the world is still working out how to make it at home.

In this section, we look at why sodium-ion is moving now, where it can beat lithium iron phosphate on cost or in the cold, and what China's head start means for everyone else.

Battery buyers want cheaper cells, and they don't want to depend on lithium, whose price can swing wildly from one year to the next.

We compare six kinds of companies, from cell makers to cathode and anode suppliers and the firms that build packs and storage systems. Their buyers are carmakers, scooter and truck makers, and grid storage developers. Then we rank what hurts most, like lithium price swings, batteries that lose power in the cold, and fire risk on crowded sites.

This shows where buyers will switch to sodium first, and where lithium still wins.

Cell sales, cathode and anode materials, licenses for chemistries and factory designs, and complete storage systems: sodium-ion companies get paid at every step of the chain.

We compare who pays and what each part costs. A cell maker needs large orders to fill its lines, and competes with lithium cells that keep getting cheaper. A materials supplier can sell to many cell makers, but has to qualify each product first. Licensing a chemistry is cheap to scale, but pays only when partners build factories. And system integrators earn on the whole container while buying cells from someone else.

You'll see which models still make money when lithium gets cheap again, and which ones only work when it's expensive.

Sodium-ion won't grow just because sodium is cheap. Several things have to happen, and we go through each of them.

Some drivers are easy to see: cheap and plentiful sodium, demand for grid storage, and carmakers that want batteries for small EVs and cold climates. Others reinforce each other. Bigger orders fill new production lines. Fuller lines bring costs down. And lower costs win more buyers, whose field data helps convince the next one.

Before building or investing, you should know what it takes for sodium-ion to stay cheaper than lithium iron phosphate, even when lithium prices fall.

Natron Energy was the American sodium-ion startup everyone quoted, until it shut down in 2025. Today, most of the market sits in China, and it goes well beyond the giant cell makers.

Beyond the big cell makers, a lot happens in quieter corners. Some companies only make hard carbon from coconut shells or wood waste. Others turn industrial chemicals into Prussian white cathodes, build sodium packs for scooters and small cars, or design the production lines that cell makers buy.

They're hard to compare because each one tests its cells under different conditions. An energy density figure from a small lab cell is not the same as one from a full pack, and few companies publish both.

Below are the market grids and ecosystem maps we've built to show who supplies whom across the sodium-ion chain, and where newcomers are getting in.

HiNa Battery, Altris, Faradion… a few sodium-ion companies have moved well past the lab, each at a different point in the chain.

HiNa Battery supplied the cells for a 100 MWh sodium-ion storage station in Hubei, one of the largest of its kind. Altris licenses its Prussian white cathode, with a first production line being set up in the Czech Republic. Faradion, now owned by Reliance, brings its cell designs to the group's battery plans in India. None has yet proven that sodium-ion can make steady profits, but each found a real place in the supply chain.

We'll look at how these teams picked their first customers, matched their chemistry to the job, and avoided building too much, too early.