Toyota plans solid-state battery technology: fully charged in 15 minutes, and can maintain more than 90% performance for 30 years

Compared with lithium batteries, new solid-state batteries have many advantages and are therefore considered the development direction of the next generation of power batteries. Currently, many car companies are working on solid-state battery technology. Toyota, as the world's largest car company, is making close arrangements.

As early as last October, on the eve of the opening of the Tokyo Motor Show, Toyota's Executive President and Chief Technology Officer Shigeki Terashi revealed that Toyota will launch a new energy vehicle equipped with solid-state batteries during the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, and mass production of this model is not expected to be achieved until 2025.

However, due to the epidemic, this plan had to be postponed.

In an interview with the media, Keiji Kaita, executive vice president of Toyota Motor Powertrain Company and general manager of the battery industry, said that it is too early to discuss the time when solid-state batteries will be put on the market. Like many forward-looking technologies, the commercialization of solid-state batteries also faces multiple obstacles.

It is understood that compared with lithium-ion batteries , solid-state batteries have an energy density 2-3 times that of lithium-ion batteries, and are lightweight, long-life, safer, and less susceptible to the impact of temperature on battery performance. Toyota's solid-state battery prototype is also much faster to charge than lithium-ion batteries, taking only 15 minutes from zero to full. Keiji Kaita said that Toyota hopes to mass-produce solid-state batteries by 2025. In the early stage, the price will be higher than that of lithium-ion batteries due to cost and scale.

Toyota is not the only automaker to invest in solid-state batteries. In December 2017, BMW announced that it would start developing solid-state batteries for electric vehicles in collaboration with Soild Power, a battery technology startup that subsequently received investments from Hyundai and Ford. Volkswagen also said it would build a plant in Europe to produce solid-state batteries, and proposed to strive to achieve mass production between 2024 and 2025.

Toyota hopes that the solid-state batteries it produces can be used for more than 30 years and still maintain more than 90% of their performance.