What gives sodium-ion batteries their main cost advantage over lithium-ion?

Sodium-ion batteries gain their cost advantage from sodium itself, which is one of the most abundant and cheapest elements on Earth, letting manufacturers avoid the price swings and supply constraints that come with scarcer materials like lithium and cobalt.

Gold is not used as an electrolyte in any mainstream battery chemistry, it's a precious metal valued for entirely different properties like conductivity in tiny electronic contacts, not for storing large amounts of charge. Helium is an inert gas used for things like balloons and cooling, it does not store electrical charge in any battery.

Sodium-ion cells store less energy per kilogram than lithium-ion, so they're better suited to stationary grid storage or budget vehicles rather than long-range cars, but China's CATL has already begun mass-producing them, signaling the chemistry is moving from lab curiosity to real commercial product.