Toyota readying ‘game-changer’ EV battery for mass market

TOKYO: Toyota Motor Corp is scrambling to solve outstanding issues as it races to commercialize a battery breakthrough during the first half of the 2020s with the potential to cut the cost of making electric cars. All solidstate battery technology is a next-generation, high-capacity energy storage device that improves on today’s lithium-ion batteries, replacing the liquid or gel-form electrolyte with a solid, conductive material.

Among other benefits, the new technology offers more capacity and better safety.

“There are a few next-generation battery technologies we’re looking at, and the most promising is an all solid-state battery,” Toyota Chairman Takeshi Uchiyamada said in an interview ahead of the Tokyo Motor Show, which opened to the public on Friday.

“We’re scrambling to finish developing this technology, but a few issues still remain as we try to mass produce this.” Battery life is the biggest of those issues, Uchiyamada said, adding Toyota has developed the know-how to produce all solid-state batteries in such a way as to hit all the technology’s performance potential. But it hasn’t yet mastered how to mass produce them to last as intended for a mainstream car that some buyers could expect to drive for 200,000 kms (124,274 miles) or more. Uchiyamada would not say how long an electric-vehicle (EV) battery should last before it needs replacing, but he dismissed a lifespan of three years. “Nobody would buy a car like that, if you had to replace the battery after just three years,” he said. Toyota, though, appears confident it can complete the commercialization process for the new battery technology. “We believe our solid-state battery technology can be a game changer, with the potential to dramatically improve driving range,” Executive Vice President Didier Leroy told reporters on Wednesday. While Toyota is still pushing its alternative hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle technology, derided by Tesla Inc CEO Elon Musk, Uchiyamada insisted the Japanese firm is not “anti-EV”, and is spending heavily in EV technologies such as the solid-state battery.

Dubbed the “Father of the Prius,” Uchiyamada, 71, helped set the global auto industry on its path to electrification two decades ago, and believes both electric-battery cars and those with hydrogen fuel-cell technologies will be needed to ultimately replace gasoline cars.

Toyota believes solid-state battery technology can double the capacity of today’s lithium-ion battery technology, and help EVs travel further on a full charge.