The central theme of
this article is a new technology that improves the performance of lithium batteries. Unless you are in this field (I am not) you may struggle to understand the breakthrough the author is describing. I confess that I never really "got it", but what caught my attention was that this new process might allow for electric vehicle batteries that use sodium instead of lithium for their battery packs. This is very significant because lithium is a rare metal that must be imported to the U.S. It is also the main reason that electric vehicle batteries are so expensive. Since (according to the periodic chart) the sodium atom is almost four times heavier than the lithium atom I do not see how sodium batteries can ever measure up to lithium batteries in terms of energy density, but they should still be far lighter than batteries made from heavy metals like nickel, zinc, or lead. Most importantly, they have the potential of making electric cars affordable to the general public.