The electrode material used in sodium ion batteries is mainly sodium salts, which have richer reserves and lower prices compared to lithium salts. Due to the fact that sodium ions are larger than lithium ions, sodium ion batteries are a cost-effective alternative when weight and energy density requirements are not high.

Compared with lithium-ion batteries, sodium ion batteries have the following advantages: (1) rich reserves of sodium salt raw materials, low prices, and the use of iron manganese nickel based cathode materials can reduce the raw material cost by half compared to ternary cathode materials for lithium-ion batteries; (2) Due to the characteristics of sodium salts, it is allowed to use low concentration electrolytes (with the same concentration electrolyte, the conductivity of sodium salts is about 20% higher than that of lithium electrolytes) to reduce costs; (3) Sodium ions do not form an alloy with aluminum, and aluminum foil can be used as the current collector for the negative electrode, which can further reduce costs by about 8% and weight by about 10%; (4) Due to the non over discharge characteristics of sodium ion batteries, it is allowed to discharge to zero volts. Sodium ion batteries have an energy density greater than 100Wh/kg, which is comparable to lithium iron phosphate batteries. However, their cost advantage is significant and they are expected to replace traditional lead-acid batteries in large-scale energy storage.