EcoPro BM Co., a South Korea cathode material producer, is in close discussion with a domestic carmaker to produce cathode materials for sodium-based batteries, emerging as an alternative to lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles.
Lee Dongwook, EcoPro’s technology chief, said the company has recently begun discussions with the unidentified Korean carmaker to release EVs embedded with sodium-ion batteries.
“We’re in the completion stage for the cathode material development, and we will need to monitor the market conditions of EV batteries,” he told a news conference held on the sidelines of InterBattery Europe 2024.
Compared with lithium-ion batteries, the most widely used for EVs, sodium-ion batteries use sodium instead of lithium to generate electricity.
“We have been developing sodium-ion-related technology for two years and have reached a level where it can be produced immediately,” said Lee. But it has yet to mass-produce them in the absence of demand from Korean battery makers and thus needs to monitor market conditions, he told reporters.
CATL Co., a Chinese battery manufacturer, has been producing sodium-ion batteries for supply to Cherry Automobiles Co.
EcoPro is capable of producing cathode materials for sodium-ion batteries on the same production lines as those for lithium-ion cathodes, so it would not require long time to launch their production.
Despite its lower energy density that lithium-ion batteries, Lee said it will be able to bring the technology to the level of LFP batteries within one to two years.
Domestic battery manufacturers have mainly focused on ternary batteries made of nickel, cobalt and aluminum (NCA), or nickel, cobalt and manganese (NCM). That resulted in them losing ground to Chinese rivals in the LFP battery segment, where Chinese companies have improved their performance.