Toyota Aims to Launch the 'World's First' All-Solid-State EV Batteries (electrek.co) 34
Toyota is fast-tracking its long-promised all-solid-state EV batteries through a new partnership with Sumitomo Metal Mining, aiming to debut its first production vehicle using the technology by 2027 or 2028. Electrek reports: Toyota said that its new batteries could significantly enhance driving range, charging times, and output, potentially transforming the future of automobiles. Compared to current liquid-based batteries, which use electrolyte solutions, Toyota's all-solid-state batteries utilize a cathode, an anode, and a solid electrolyte. According to Toyota, the next-gen battery tech "offers the potential for smaller size, higher output, and longer life."
The two companies have been developing cathode materials for all-solid-state EV batteries since 2021, focusing on some of the biggest challenges in producing them at a mass scale. Using Sumitomo Metal Mining's proprietary powder synthesis technology, Toyota claimed to have developed a "highly durable cathode material" for all-solid-state batteries. Sumitomo has been supplying cathode materials for electric vehicles for years, but it's now working to introduce the newly developed tech, moving it toward mass production.
The two companies have been developing cathode materials for all-solid-state EV batteries since 2021, focusing on some of the biggest challenges in producing them at a mass scale. Using Sumitomo Metal Mining's proprietary powder synthesis technology, Toyota claimed to have developed a "highly durable cathode material" for all-solid-state batteries. Sumitomo has been supplying cathode materials for electric vehicles for years, but it's now working to introduce the newly developed tech, moving it toward mass production.
VW? (Score:2)
Didn't Toyota have a joint venture with VW on this tech? I see some vague mention of solid state batteries in VWAG's future product lineup:
https://www.electrive.com/2025... [electrive.com]
Lithium supply (Re:VW?) (Score:1, Flamebait)
The mention of sodium-ion batteries in the story linked to in the parent post is a hint of known issues with supplies of lithium. Current annual production of lithium is in the tens of thousands of tons. A bit of searching the web tells me that there's about 100 pounds of lithium in a typical BEV battery. I can just hear people typing now, so that's like enough lithium to make millions of car per year so where's the problem? The problem is that this lithium is already spoken for, it's produced because t
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Lolme2rited00dz? (Score:2)
1995 is over, Toyota.
Sumitomo, really? (Score:4, Interesting)
15 years ago Sumitomo was promising low temp molten salt batteries at 1/10th the cost of Li-on by 2015.
I followed this for some years but iirc the company stopped talking about it entirely by about 2017
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They have the tech - they have demonstrated it, I actually got to see one. Problem is "low temperature" is relative. In their case, the melting point of their salts were 61C and the operating temperature is 90C. For molten salt, that's great, but for operating a car, it's not practical to have to heat and keep your batteries at 90C. What you save in energy density you lose in heating and what you save in space you lose in insulation.
They did what they said. There just isn't a good use case for it - it'
Re: Sumitomo, really? (Score:3)
Also, Li-ion prices fell ~10x since 2010 which made may competing technologies uncompetitive.
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there was already the ZEBRA battery that had been used in Think City EVs that operated at very high temps.
even if you believe 90C is impractical for a car it could be very useful for heavy vehicles especially as a hybrid.
i was under the impression Sumitomo would implement it 1st for commercial or industrial vehicles not passenger EVs
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The coolant in an ICE vehicle circulates at about 90C. As long as these batteries are minimally "usable" as they are still warming up to operating temp, it''s a not a deal breaker. E.g let's say you only get 20% power when the battery is cold. Enough to get in the vehicle, put on a seatbelt, pair your phone, back out. If "enough" of the cells are ip to temp after a minute, that's probably good enough to then get on with your journey.
Of course, discussions about EVs always seem populated only by people who
Re:Sumitomo, really? (Score:5, Informative)
They deployed some in Japan, but it turned out that even the low temperature ones were not significantly cheaper or better than the rapidly improving Chinese lithium ion ones.
Toyota may be in the same position. They have been promising this for a long time, but if you look at their claims from a few years ago they aren't really any better than what CATL and BYD are shipping today. Theoretically longer lifespan perhaps, but batteries already outlast the rest of the car. BYD is selling cars that charge at 1000kW, so speed isn't really an issue. Modern chemistries are very hard to ignite. Chances are their tech will be expensive when it arrives, so not very competitive.
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In related news the molten salt battery company Ambri is no more. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org].
At some point I noticed with the announcements of new battery technology the name Donald Sadoway wasn't showing up like it used to. Then I saw a mention that his company declared bankruptcy and sold off their assets.
Ambri wasn't in the business of making batteries for EVs but for stationary applications. That still put Ambri in competition with Tesla and other companies that were using the same batteries f
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I saw some of Sadoway's early presentations before the founding of Ambri but I thought they'd survived Chapter 11 and were still operating.
Their website is still up and there's this on their News page, linked to BusinessWire
https://www.businesswire.com/n... [businesswire.com]
wow (Score:3)
Compared to current liquid-based batteries, which use electrolyte solutions, Toyota's all-solid-state batteries utilize a cathode, an anode, and a solid electrolyte.
Wow, they use a cathode and an anode? HIGH TECH SHIT.
Seriously though, I am hoping they are successful. I want batteries to continue falling rapidly in price so I root for any improvements anywhere. Competition is good. I also still want to see NCM banned for multiple reasons, and having more alternate and safer options makes that more likely.
They’ve been touting this bullshit for decad (Score:5, Informative)
2017 – Toyota’s chairman said they were “scrambling” to finish developing solid-state battery technology, aiming for launch in the early 2020s.
2019 – Toyota’s CTO stated they would unveil a solid-state battery prototype at the 2020 Olympics, with mass production expected in the middle of the next decade (~2024–2025).
2022 – Toyota representatives and research arms claimed solid-state batteries were “2–3 years away”, implying commercialization by 2024–2025.
2023 (June) – Toyota officially announced plans to launch an EV with solid-state batteries “as early as 2027”.
2023 (October) – Toyota and Idemitsu Kosan announced a partnership to mass-produce solid electrolytes, reiterating plans to launch solid-state EVs in 2027–2028 and begin full-scale production thereafter.
2025 (October) – Toyota and Sumitomo Metal announced progress on cathode materials for solid-state batteries and again confirmed a target of 2027–2028 for launching solid-state EVs.
It’s always been bullshit. Always
It will be delivered at the same time as true FSD (Score:3)
But perhaps before useful nuclear fusion.
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Did you miss the reference to the announcements in 2022 and 2023, which would be, erm, after 2020?
Yet another delaying tactic? (Score:3)
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Yep. They're always saying solid state batteries are 2-3 years away.
Sure, when solid state actually does happen (and I expect it will) it will be a game changer for EVs.
But Toyota just keeps postponing doing anything serious with EVs because they keep claiming this is right around the corner.
Wasn't the 2025 Prius supposed to use solid state batteries?
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*Such* a strange comment about battery life: “Won’t know for sure [how long they will last] until they’ve been around for 5-10 years to see.” We are so far past that point already!
I got my first EV 10 years ago, and it was not a cutting edge oddball early adopter car, it was a mainstream European supermini, a Renault Zoe. There are literally tens of thousands of EVs dating back 10 years or more on the UK’s roads alone, and hundreds of thousands around the world, so we have tons
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While lithium *CAN* be recycled indefinitely that is currently not the case because it is less costly to mine lithium than extract it from old batteries.
I'm seeing concerns about getting enough lithium at prices people are willing to pay. It would appear that lithium-ion batteries are facing competition with sodium-ion batteries. Sodium-ion batteries are something like twice the mass and volume of lithium-ion per unit of energy but this doesn't appear to be too much of an issue given that we are already s
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It won't be a game changer, it'll fix the cold weather problems.
One thing it could help with, certainly.
There's still the upstream power source being dirty.
This is not really the domain of an EV. What is the case is that the "upstream power source" is almost certainly always cleaner than the "upstream power source" for an ICE. I should not need to go over all the reasons in this day and age, but I will cover some: EVS are drastically more efficient and even if the upstream power comes from fossil fuels, efficiencies of scale mean that the upstream power plant is more efficient than an ICE car engine and the fuel distribu
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Sure, EVs don't magically clean up the upstream power source issue, but with ICE vehicles, there isn't even the option to clean it up, while there is with EVs.
We can clean up ICEVs with synthesized fuels. That is a technology getting plenty of attention because while EVs are great for commuter cars they are not practical for transoceanic jetliners. People want "guilt free" flying and so will pay extra to see carbon neutral fuels used for their flying. As the technology develops we can expect the price to drop and, as I see it anyway, inevitably replace fossil fuels.
The air quality issues posed by EVs to local air quality are negligible - they could theoretically produce tiny amounts of ozone but it is negligible, and they still produce brake dust (low compared to ICE vehicles because of regenerative braking, so the physical brakes only engage briefly at low speed, generating little dust) and tire dust (possibly more than ICE vehicles due to torque and potentially higher weight) but in total they produce far less local emissions than ICE vehicles.
This isn't only a debate on BEV vs. ICEV as there is the compromise with the PHEV. Within the P
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We can clean up ICEVs with synthesized fuels. That is a technology getting plenty of attention because while EVs are great for commuter cars they are not practical for transoceanic jetliners. People want "guilt free" flying and so will pay extra to see carbon neutral fuels used for their flying. As the technology develops we can expect the price to drop and, as I see it anyway, inevitably replace fossil fuels.
That's a point, certainly. However, the total round trip conversion losses in the process are a bit problematic: generate electricity -> use electricity to electrolyze water to get hydrogen (not the only possible first step, but a typical one in many processes) -> generating carbon monoxide (possible through various processes) and mixing it with the hydrogen (also not the only possible way) -> converting to hydrocarbons through Fischer-Tropsch -> refining the hydrocarbons through a variation on
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[straw man bullshit removed for brevity]
So, certainly there is niche at present for synthetic fuels for planes and other niches where grid-based charging is just impossible. For cars though, it's economically impractical to clean up ICE vehicles with synthetic gas and, until none of those losses represent emissions or other pollution/waste, it does not compete with just using EVs in terms of reduced upstream power environmental costs.
To get to that conclusion you had to describe a process that nobody would use precisely because of the inefficiency. It's a straw man argument and you should feel bad for bringing it up.
I did discuss hybrids briefly at the end, but I kept this mainly on EV vs. ICE for simplicity.
That simplicity is effectively a lie by omission. This seems to happen a lot in any debate on energy and the environment and I find it disturbing. If the goal is to lay out a plan for the future then all options need to be laid out. Removing an option for "simplicity" is dismissing an option without explanation and ends
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To get to that conclusion you had to describe a process that nobody would use precisely because of the inefficiency. It's a straw man argument and you should feel bad for bringing it up.
So, just to be clear, what process are you proposing to create synthetic gasoline substitute that's so marvelously efficient? I note that you did not propose one. Also, I have to note that your conclusion that my description of the chain to getting to synthetic fuel without fossil fuels to start with was in bad faith itself seems a lot like bad faith. So please, update the chain I presented with an alternative one that's practical, based on currently conceivable technology and significantly more efficient.
The real problem (Score:3)
The real problem for most people is "Where do I plug it in?"
If you have a drive/garage/reserved parking space you can charge your car conveniently using low rate power overnight. You probably spend less time on this than many people spend pumping gas once a week. And it costs a lot less.
But if you have to rely on public chargers... well, they are unreliable (even if it is working, will there be a free port when you roll up?) and expensive
Given this issue, the difference between today's batteries and next year's tech is irrelevant to most people.
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linked article claims 10 minute charge time which will make lines shorter at least. Once they get into below 5 minute territory it's same as ICE car at gas station.
I'll believe a 10 minute recharge is possible when I see it.
To get a passenger car (as we understand that term today) to go a "reasonable" amount of distance on a charge (which would be 200-ish miles) requires a certain amount of energy. We can work on energy efficiency, aerodynamic drag, and so on to reduce this energy requirement but there's going to be a limit while keeping the cost of the vehicle to something people would want to buy. To move that amount of energy into a battery is, by definition, goi
I Would LOVE.... (Score:1)
....to replace my AGM batteries in my solar shed with solid state batts.
The sooner the better, as long as the price is right!
Ferret