Toyota’s New Solid-State Battery Prototype – a True EV Game Changer?

Imagine having an electric car battery that provides more than 300 miles of range, requires no bulky heating and cooling systems, charges in approximately ten minutes, maintains 80 percent of its charge capacity for 800 cycles, which is about 240,000 miles, and it’s not prone to spontaneous combustion. It’s a promise of the new solid-state car battery, which is considered the holy grail that manufacturers and automakers are racing to find. Now, Toyota announced that it would have a running prototype with this type of battery ready by 2021.

Toyota’s New Solid-State Battery Implementation

The implications of this new technology should be considered. Charge times and range are the biggest barriers to EV adoption. While a ten-minute charge is still quite longer than it takes to fill a gas tank with fuel, it’s a lot better than having to make lunch plans while the vehicle recharges. It’s a fast-charging compact battery that could be the EV equivalent of the electric starter because it will allow battery-powered electric vehicles to conquer internal-combustion power once and for all.

Toyota is not the only company in this race. It’s not the only company making headlines, either. Recently, a California company called QuantumScape announced great and promising test results for its solid-state battery. The announcement that Toyota made about its upcoming Euro-market electric SUV included the note that they planned on having solid-state battery technology in their production of vehicles by 2025.

A Solid-State Partnership!

Toyota, which has a great partnership with Panasonic, currently has more than a thousand patents that cover solid-state batteries. However, Nissan is working on its solid-state battery. It claims that it will appear in a “non-simulation” vehicle by 2028. Toyota currently does not offer any vehicle that runs on battery in the United States and hasn’t offered one since the 2012-2014 RAV4 EV. However, they are about to launch an update of the hydrogen fuel cell-powered Mirai.

The race to develop a solid-state battery for electric vehicles is on, and if Toyota plans to manufacture a running prototype in 2021, we will be looking at the prevailing automotive technology of the future at some point next year.