Toyota Claims Solid-State Battery Has 745 Mile Range, 10 Minute Charging Time
After announcing a new electric car strategy last month, Toyota is now claiming it has made a technological breakthrough that will allow it to cut the weight, size, and cost of batteries in half. The company claims it has developed ways to make a solid-state battery with a range of 1,200 km (745 miles) that could charge in 10 minutes or less and would be simpler to manufacture than a conventional lithium-ion battery. CleanTechnica reports: On July 3, the company said it had simplified the production of the material used to make solid-state batteries and hailed the discovery as a significant leap forward that could dramatically cut charging times and increase driving range. "For both our liquid and our solid-state batteries, we are aiming to drastically change the situation where current batteries are too big, heavy and expensive. In terms of potential, we will aim to halve all of these factors." said Keiji Kaita, president of the Toyota research and development center for carbon neutrality. He added that his company has developed ways to make batteries more durable, and believed it could now make a solid-state battery with a range of 1,200 km (745 miles) that could charge in 10 minutes or less and would be simpler to manufacture than a conventional lithium-ion battery. CleanTechnica readers, being the well-informed people they are, are aware that the leap from the laboratory to commercial production is often long and difficult. If Toyota has made progress in that area, that is indeed something to be celebrated. But once again, we have to emphasize, that is a big "if." Nevertheless, our readers will want to know some specifics, things like energy density, charge and discharge rates, the number of charging cycles possible, how the batteries perform in cold temperatures, what they are made of -- things like that. They have been trained over many years to be skeptical of announcements such as this one. After all, companies like QuantumScape have been making similar promises for almost a decade, and we are all still waiting for that company to get its batteries into production. David Bailey, a professor of business economics at the University of Birmingham, told The Guardian that if Toyota's claims are accurate, it could be a landmark moment for the future of electric cars. "Often there are breakthroughs at the prototype stage but then scaling it up is difficult. If it is a genuine breakthrough it could be a game changer -- very much the holy grail of battery vehicles." Congratulations to Bailey for using two of the three most trite phrases about new technology in one sentence. Sharp-eyed readers will notice that even with this solid-state battery news, Toyota still has modest goals for its battery-electric cars. It plans to manufacture 3 million of them a year by 2030 -- half with solid-state batteries.
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