JAC Motors, the Chinese state-backed automobile manufacturer, is going to launch what it calls the world’s first mass-produced electric vehicle with a sodium-ion battery. JAC has announced that deliveries will begin in January 2024. Sodium-ion batteries have a lower energy density than lithium batteries; however, their lower cost and better performance in cold weather could help speed up mass electric vehicle adoption.
Update (October 2026): The launch went ahead on schedule. CnEVPost, citing Anhui Daily, reported that JAC’s Yiwei brand delivered its first sodium-ion battery EVs on January 5, 2024, in Anqing, Anhui province. The delivered car is a new variant of the Yiwei 3 hatchback using cylindrical sodium-ion cells from HiNa Battery, with a 23.2 kWh pack and a CLTC range of 230 km. The report also said the cells keep over 92 percent of their capacity at -20°C and can charge from 10 to 80 percent in 20 minutes. The original article from December 2023 follows, with its ownership details corrected.
Yiwei is a new EV brand under JAC (Anhui Jianghuai Automobile), established in 2023. JAC’s parent company, JAG (Anhui Jianghuai Automobile Group Holdings), is 50 percent state-owned and 50 percent owned by Volkswagen Group, which acquired its stake in 2020. Volkswagen’s investment in a Chinese state-owned carmaker caused controversy. Separately, in July 2023, Volkswagen invested $700 million in Xpeng, another Chinese electric vehicle maker, receiving a stake of nearly 5 percent and access to Xpeng’s E/E (electrical/electronic) platform.
According to CarNewsChina, pictures released by JAC suggest the new sodium-ion EV is based on the Sehol E10X hatchback. In February 2023, JAC put a sodium-ion battery into a Sehol E10X with a 25 kWh capacity, a range of 252 km and HiNa NaCR32140 cells. When JAC launched the Yiwei brand in 2023, it said it would drop the Sehol brand and rebadge its vehicles as either Yiwei or JAC. At the time of the production announcement, JAC had not confirmed the new car’s name.
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JAC has recently pushed into the research and development of sodium-ion batteries. In April 2023, at the Shanghai Auto Show, JAC presented its first car under the Yiwei brand, the Yiwei 3, with a sodium-ion battery. When the Yiwei 3 launched in June, however, it came only with an LFP lithium battery, and JAC promised that the sodium-ion variant would follow. The Yiwei 3 with a 51.5 kWh battery has a maximum range of 505 km CLTC.
The Yiwei EV uses cylindrical sodium-ion cells from HiNa Battery, which JAC assembles using its UE (Unitized Encapsulation) module technology, a honeycomb-like battery structure. The chairman of Yiwei, Xia Shunli, said that sodium-ion batteries will become an important battery type, complementary to LFP batteries, and a low-cost solution that helps make electric vehicles popular with the masses.
