Zhongke Haidong General Manager Li Shujun: Sodium battery prices are expected to catch up with lithium batteries in the next year or two.

Ask AI · After the price convergence, how will market confidence in sodium batteries change?

IT Home reported on April 1 that, according to Jiemian News, regarding the question of when sodium batteries become economically competitive with lithium batteries, Li Shujun, General Manager of Zhongke Haidong, revealed that both the price of sodium batteries and that of lithium batteries have a certain range distribution. Lithium batteries are mainly between 0.3-0.5 yuan /Wh, while sodium batteries are currently between 0.5-0.7 yuan /Wh, depending on specific application scenarios.

Li Shujun believes that the cost of sodium-ion batteries is rapidly falling, while the cost of lithium batteries is rising; the two price ranges will achieve convergence and overlap. The time at which they converge has a clear marker, meaning that market linkage has formed, and market confidence will also shift accordingly. He expects the price convergence point to appear next year, and says this timing is “quite certain.” By the following year, an overlap is expected to form.

He also mentioned that, expected after 2028, the performance market will drive the sodium-ion battery industry scale to reach 100 GWh, and the cell cost will be reduced to 0.3 yuan /Wh. With technological evolution, the energy density of energy-type sodium battery products will break through 180Wh/kg.

This image appears to be AI-generated.

In September 2025, the National Energy Administration and three other departments issued guidance on promoting high-quality development of energy equipment. It proposed, among other things, to promote the establishment of a high-safety and high-reliability battery energy storage equipment system, develop key equipment for long-life, wide-temperature-range, low-degradation lithium batteries, sodium batteries, and solid-state batteries, and build a low-cost long-duration flow battery equipment system based on vanadium, iron, and organic materials.

In the same year, on April 1, CATL released the world’s first large-scale mass-produced sodium battery—CATL Sodium New—officially kicking off the broad application of sodium battery products from 0 to N. CATL Sodium New includes two types of products: “Sodium New Power Battery” and “Sodium New-24V Heavy Truck Start-Stop Integrated Battery,” and both can conquer the full temperature range from -40℃ to 70℃.

According to IT Home’s previous report, CATL said that in 2026, sodium batteries will be applied at large scale in fields such as battery swapping, passenger vehicles, commercial vehicles, and energy storage, and are expected to form a new trend of “sodium and lithium dual stars shining.”