A common element found in table salt may hold the key to powering China’s next wave of electric vehicle (EV) adoption.
Cars featuring a sodium-ion battery, an emerging technology, are slated to go on sale in the country in mid-2026, according to the battery’s maker, the Ningde, China–based company Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL), and the vehicles’ manufacturer, the Chongqing, China–based firm Changan Automobile.
Even if these EVs are unlikely to reach the U.S., the announcement by CATL—which, as the world’s largest EV battery maker, produces an estimated 40 percent of the global supply—offers an early signal of whether sodium-ion tech can eventually lower battery costs or improve EV performance in winter.
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The battery, called Naxtra, can perform stably at –50 degrees Celsius (–58 degrees Fahrenheit), CATL says—a feature that could address one of EVs’ biggest drawbacks: the diminished range and slower charging brought about by deep cold. For anyone who’s watched their car’s range drop on a frigid morning, this claim is hard to ignore.
“It may benefit other cold regions, too, such as parts of the United States, Canada and Europe,” says Liu Chenguang, a battery researcher at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University in China. Minnesotans and upstate New Yorkers, rejoice.
Conquering the Cold
The majority of EVs in the world right now are powered by lithium-ion batteries, which are more powerful than sodium-ion batteries but perform differently in cold weather than they do in warm conditions. In low temperatures, many lithium-ion EVs deliver less power and charge more slowly.
Batteries store and release energy by shuttling charged particles between electrodes through an electrolyte; cold temperatures make those processes sluggish.
As the name implies, sodium-ion batteries swap out lithium for sodium, an abundant element found widely in salts.
Although sodium ions are larger, they form weaker bonds with the liquid electrolyte than lithium does. This allows them to detach and move much more easily than lithium ions, even when the cold makes the electrolyte thick, Liu says. “Cold weather makes all ions move slower, but sodium-based systems are often less affected, so they can keep more power and capacity in winter.”
CATL’s Naxtra sodium-ion battery, on display at a 2025 Beijing expo, is designed to charge in temperatures as low as –50 degrees C, or –58 degrees F.
Jade Gao/AFP via Getty Images
CATL claims that at –30 degrees C (–22 degrees F), Naxtra can deliver nearly three times the discharge power of equivalent LFPs, or lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries, the cheap, standard-range batteries that dominate the Chinese EV market. The battery can charge to 90 percent full when the temperature drops to –40 degrees C (–40 degrees F) and achieves “stable power delivery” at –50 degrees C in test conditions, the company notes.
Charging and discharging at –50 degrees C is “scientifically possible, though extremely challenging,” says Kenil Rajpura, a materials scientist at Pandit Deendayal Energy University in India. He says reaching those temperatures depends on careful use of materials and pack design—including electrolytes that keep working in extreme cold.
By comparison, many lithium-ion batteries struggle at those extremes. “At those temperatures, most lithium-ion batteries would deliver only a very small fraction of their original capacity unless the pack has an active heating system,” Liu explains.
Charging in the cold can also be risky for lithium-ion batteries because the ions cannot enter the anode fast enough, leading them to plate onto the surface. That can damage the battery and, in worst cases, cause safety hazards, Rajpura says.
Still, the figures CATL has shared are likely best-case results from controlled tests, according to Xing Lei, a U.S.-based independent analyst of the Chinese auto industry. They serve as reference points that one should “take a grain of salt with,” Xing says. How those EVs perform in the real world will depend on a range of factors, including how customers use them.
Storing more energy
Over the past decade, CATL has spent nearly 10 billion yuan ($1.4 billion) and put more than 300 staff onto developing sodium-ion batteries, according to the company.
CATL put its first sodium-ion batteries into a Chery-manufactured car in 2023. Those vehicles had a range of just 170 kilometers and sold poorly, however, according to an analysis by the Shenzhen-based Starting Point Research Institute.
The Naxtra sodium-ion battery relies on abundant sodium rather than lithium to achieve improved winter performance.
Chan Long Hei/Bloomberg via Getty Images
But the newly announced model is expected to have a 400-kilometer range on the China Light-Duty Vehicle Test Cycle (CLTC), a lab test, thanks to Naxtra’s improved energy density. CLTC lab-test figures often come in higher than U.S. Environmental Protection Agency range ratings, and drivers may see less range in the real world. The figure provided by CATL is up to 175 watt-hours per kilogram, which represents roughly 90 percent of the energy density of current LFP batteries.
Rajpura calls the number “the upper commercial boundary” of current sodium-ion technology. Liu calls it “a strong number” that suggests that sodium-ion batteries are becoming practical for shorter-range, city-focused cars.
CATL’s cell-to-pack system also boosts energy density by putting battery cells directly into a pack instead of bundling them into separate modules first, which cuts extra material and weight, says Chen Shan, an analyst at energy research company Rystad Energy.
While sodium is abundant, the young supply chain means manufacturing these batteries is currently about 30 percent more expensive than making comparable lithium-ion batteries in China, realistically pushing mass production toward the end of this decade, Xing says.
If the car performs well at low temperatures without costing a premium, sodium-ion technology could find a foothold in colder regions, says Phate Zhang, founder of the Shanghai-based EV news outlet CnEVPost. “If not, it may remain a niche chemistry for now,” he says.
