Sodium-ion batteries: Correlation
Prices it moves with, and why
Sodium-ion cells use abundant sodium, aluminium foil and hard carbon instead of lithium, copper and graphite. Prices depend on factory scale, mainly in China, and their appeal depends on lithium prices and the cost of LFP cells.
Proxy US PPI: storage batteries excl. lead-acid index · monthly, Jan 2006 to Sep 2026There is no free public price for sodium-ion batteries itself, so this tab uses the closest public series as a stand-in. Read the numbers as an indication, not as the price of this exact item.
What its price moves with
Selected linkSodium-ion batteries and Soda ash
Monthly changes -0.03 little or none correlation 12-month changes 0.36 weak correlation Last 5 years -0.03 monthly changes Lead or lag −2 mo Sodium-ion batteries tends to lead by 2 months (r 0.18) Price function, Jan 2006 to Sep 2026 Sodium-ion batteries ≈ 3.09 × (Soda ash)0.72 R² 0.69 On this fit, a 10% higher soda ash price goes with a 7.1% higher sodium-ion batteries price over the long run. Units: index and index, BLS base period.Chart: Sodium-ion batteries and Soda ash prices rebased to 100 at Jan 2006, log scale
Both prices rebased to 100 at Jan 2006, on a log scale so equal percentage moves look the same size.Chart: Sodium-ion batteries price against Soda ash price, monthly, log scales, with fitted line
Each dot is one month; paler dots are older (2006), darker dots recent (2026); the ringed dot is the latest month. The dashed line is the fitted price function. Both axes are logarithmic.Sodium carbonate from soda ash is the usual sodium source for cathodes, and it is cheap and plentiful. The alkalies proxy shows no monthly link to the battery proxy, at -0.03, though yearly moves correlate at 0.36.
little or none co-movement month to month · 243 months Show chartsSodium does not alloy with aluminium, so both electrodes can use aluminium foil instead of copper on the anode side, which cuts cost. The battery proxy shows no clear link to aluminium, with yearly moves at 0.21.
little or none co-movement month to month · 243 months Show chartsSodium cells use hard carbon anodes made from biomass, resins or pitch, since sodium does not fit well in graphite. Hard carbon supply is still scaling up and is a significant part of cell cost.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Sodium-ion gains when lithium is dear. The lithium spike prompted Chinese makers to build sodium lines, and the following lithium crash slowed adoption, showing that lithium prices largely set its market.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Sodium-ion competes with LFP for storage and small cars, trading lower energy density for cost and cold weather performance. Both use the same battery index on the site, so no separate statistics are shown.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.How to read these numbers
Correlation of monthly changes (the number in the coloured pill) compares how much each price moved, month by month, since 2006 or the first month both series exist. It runs from −1 to +1: near +1 the two usually rise and fall in the same months, near 0 there is no link, and a negative number means they tend to move in opposite directions. Above 0.7 is strong, 0.4 to 0.7 moderate, 0.2 to 0.4 weak.
12-month changes compare year-on-year moves, which shows whether two prices share the same cycles even when the month-to-month noise differs.
Price function is a straight-line fit of the two prices on logarithmic scales: price ≈ k × (partner price)β. β is how much this price moves, in per cent, for a 1% move in the partner over the whole period, and R² is the share of the variation the fit explains. Two prices that both drift up with inflation can fit well without any real link, so read it together with the monthly correlation.
Lead or lag checks whether the monthly correlation is clearly higher when one price is shifted by 1 to 6 months.
Correlation is not cause. The reasons on each card explain the economic link; the numbers show how strongly it has shown up in prices. Proxy series are US producer price indexes or related prices and can blur the real link.
Data: World Bank Commodity Price Data (Pink Sheet), October 2026; US Bureau of Labor Statistics producer price indexes, IMF primary commodity prices and US EIA prices via FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, retrieved November 2026. Calculations by this site.