Miracle batteries are announced every month. But when the world’s largest automaker makes a statement like that, it makes people sit up and take notice.
Toyota claims to have made great strides in developing new solid-state batteries. The Japanese talk about a “technological breakthrough” that allows electric cars with a range of 1200 kilometers to be charged in ten minutes or less. The new battery technology would thus roughly double the range compared to previous batteries and more than halve the charging time.
“Batteries are currently too big, too heavy and too expensive. We want to change that dramatically in both our liquid and solid state batteries,” said Keiji Kaita, CO Research and Development Center Chair2-Toyota is neutral towards the “Financial Times” (paywall). The company has also developed ways to make the batteries last longer.
According to Kaita, the production costs for the new batteries could be comparable or less expensive than the lithium-ion batteries used in electric cars today, as the production of the material from which the solid-state batteries are made has been simplified.
In the future, the goal is to halve the cost, size and weight compared to current batteries. That would – at least in theory – make electric cars cheaper on balance, since the battery was often the most expensive component until now.
According to Kaita, Toyota found a way to mitigate the stability problems of solid-state batteries three years ago. The Japanese now plan to mass-produce solid-state batteries for electric vehicles by 2027 or 2028. If successful, it would be a milestone for electric cars. However, often there are breakthroughs in the prototype phase, but after that it becomes difficult to reach mass production.
Solid-state batteries have long been considered the holy grail of battery technology: infinitely valuable, but also extremely difficult to realize. Toyota itself described the challenge some time ago: “Solid electrolytes repeatedly expand and contract as the battery is charged and discharged, which can cause cracks that impede the movement of ions between the cathode and anode”. The Japanese want this problem solved now.
critic draw attention to itthat Toyota announced in 2017 that they were approaching a breakthrough in solid-state batteries and at the time expected the first electric cars with such batteries to be in early 2020 – so about now.
If Toyota has now made a real breakthrough, it would be a liberating blow to the world’s largest automaker, which has so far only played an additional role in the electric car market.
Toyota has long been reluctant to develop battery electric cars. Although the Japanese announced at the end of 2021 that they would market 30 purely electric models worldwide by 2030, there has been little sign of this so far and their electric cars are only partly convincing. The car giant also continues to rely on plug-in hybrids and the previously failed hydrogen drive.
Toyota is currently lagging far behind Tesla and the Chinese and German automakers when it comes to sales of e-cars. That is why it is often forgotten that the Japanese have more than 25 years of experience with electric drives and battery technology. It is therefore not entirely excluded that in a few years Toyota will also enter the field from behind with solid-state batteries, also in the case of purely electric cars.
In addition to Toyota, VW, Ford, BMW and Mercedes-Benz are also working with specialist companies on solid-state batteries, which will probably also appear in luxury cars in five years at the earliest. In the mass market, on the other hand, they are unlikely to play a major role for the next ten years. Because even if solid-state batteries reach mass production in 2028, as announced by Toyota, it should not mean the sudden end for current lithium-ion batteries.
Especially in small electric cars that are not built for long distances, cheap and long-lasting lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries will predominate in the coming years and even cheaper sodium batteries will soon be introduced. In a few years, depending on vehicle usage and customers’ willingness to pay, multiple liquid and solid batteries will likely coexist.
As a reminder, with current lithium-ion technology, it was decades before it was used in electric cars. Even though the major car and battery manufacturers have been competing for years for the new battery generation, an affordable solid-state battery doesn’t appear overnight.
Source: Blick
I am Ross William, a passionate and experienced news writer with more than four years of experience in the writing industry. I have been working as an author for 24 Instant News Reporters covering the Trending section. With a keen eye for detail, I am able to find stories that capture people’s interest and help them stay informed.
