On September 22, Yicai (China Business News) published a sodium-ion battery industry review titled 'Sodium-Ion Battery Deployment Accelerates: Has the Cost-Parity Tipping Point Really Arrived?' On the cost side, the review cites Guojin Securities data: at current raw-material prices, layered-oxide sodium-ion cells cost about 0.4215 CNY/Wh, still slightly above LFP cells at 0.4134 CNY/Wh. Although the BOM direct-material cost of sodium-ion batteries is about 10% lower, processing costs and scale effects have yet to catch up. The brokerage calculates that the lithium-ion scale-cost advantage narrows significantly once lithium carbonate exceeds 160,000 CNY/tonne, and since lithium carbonate has mostly traded within a 100,000-200,000 CNY/tonne band in 2026, the economic tipping point for sodium-ion to substitute LFP 'has formally been crossed' - though full parity has not yet arrived. Note that these cost comparisons are brokerage estimates and have not been independently verified.
On demand and supply, the institutional data sketch a price-volume picture of the industry. On demand, Guojin Securities analyst Yao Yao projects global sodium-ion battery demand of 18/59/148GWh for 2026-2028, a compound annual growth rate of 183%, with 2026 seen as the key commercialization inflection point from demonstration to scale deployment. A BOC International sodium-ion report series released in late July also shows, based on levelized cost of energy (LCOE) estimates, that by 2026 the LCOE gap between sodium-ion and LFP batteries has entered the same competitive range. On the supply side, the review says hard-carbon anodes are becoming a tight link in the sodium-ion supply chain: according to industry organization ICC Sino (Xinluo), China's hard-carbon anode output for sodium-ion batteries was roughly 5,400 tonnes in 2025, up 105% year-on-year; actual installed anode capacity in 2025 was about 28,000 tonnes with overall low utilization, and installed capacity is expected to exceed 60,000 tonnes in 2026.
The review also recaps recent industrialization signals: in the 100MW/400MWh hybrid storage project in Renqiu, Hebei, the sodium-ion storage system segment was won at 1.035 CNY/Wh (about twice the LFP segment); on September 17 Yongzhen Co. Announced a 597 million CNY project for 60,000 tonnes per year of finished battery aluminum foil, explicitly citing sodium-ion demand; on September 16 Hithium unveiled a new system built on 785Ah sodium-ion cells with 20,000 cycles and a 30-year design life, targeting mass delivery from 2027. On policy, from September 1 sodium-ion batteries received an independent customs commodity code, and the consumption-tax adjustment effective the same day exempts sodium-ion batteries from consumption tax from September 2026 through the end of 2028.
The claim that the economic tipping point 'has been crossed' is an institution's calculation based on the lithium-carbonate price band, and it cannot yet be concluded that sodium-ion has achieved full cost parity.