On September 17, Battery China (CBEA) published an industry-chain survey titled 'The Sodium-Ion Battery Production Deadlock: Stuck Before a 10-Percentage-Point Yield Gap.' According to the outlet's research-based calculation, China's actual sodium-ion battery shipments in 2025 reached only about 2G-3GWh, far below the previously estimated 6G-8GWh, with large amounts of planned capacity still remaining on paper or in construction and ramp-up stages - a structural mismatch it describes as 'hot planning, lukewarm delivery, scarce qualified output.' The outlet also projects that domestic sodium-ion battery shipments in 2026 will roughly double year-on-year to 5G-6GWh, likely again below the earlier industry expectation of 8G-9GWh.
The review identifies production yield as the core bottleneck: mature lithium-ion production lines exceed 95% yield, while sodium-ion lines run at only 85-90%. The roughly 10-percentage-point gap means more scrapped cells and higher material loss, depreciation, energy and idle-labor costs, which can offset the cost benefits of scale. On materials, the survey quotes the China Machinery International Advanced Battery and Energy Storage Materials Engineering Institute as saying that batch-to-batch specific-capacity deviation of sodium-ion cathode materials needs to be kept within ±3% and particle-size deviation within ±5%, making batch consistency difficult to control; even tiny deviations in precursors can propagate downstream to cell manufacturing. On equipment, the review says dedicated core equipment such as atmosphere sintering and hard-carbon graphitization furnaces remains in the domestic qualification stage, and repurposed general-purpose equipment may amplify yield losses.
The survey also presents divergence cases: Chaowei Group has tied up with leading material suppliers including Jana Energy, Yingna New Energy and Baisige, optimizing material parameters through joint process commissioning; the review says this model helped Chaowei's sodium-ion products enter the supply chains of leading electric two-wheeler customers, and that Chaowei ranked among the top in domestic sodium-ion battery shipments in 2025. Zoolnasm (Zhongna Energy) has integrated polyanionic cathode production with cell manufacturing and kept its sodium-ion lines at full capacity this year. By contrast, some small and mid-sized firms relying on piecemeal material procurement suffer large batch fluctuations and unstable yields.