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Toyota’s advanced battery technology roadmap
- jbm 3y ago1000 km battery, 10 minute charge? I'm suspicious for many reasons. If they can't build their prime hybrids — or even supply gas Siennas in Canada — I'm not very confident about their manufacturing in the mid-term. I hope I'm wrong.
- jbay808 3y agoIt reminds me of the old story about the inventor in the late 1890s, who claimed to have invented a car that could cross the United States running on just a gallon of water. After failing to deliver a tangible product for years, investors pushed him to either produce his vehicle or return their money. The inventor refused, saying that he'd now come up with an even better version that could cross the United States on just a single thimble of water, and it would be beneath his professional pride to release an inferior product, so he had no choice but to continue his research.
- eulgro 3y agoFor a 150 kWh battery, 10 minute charge to go from 10% to 80% SoC means charging at 600 kW or so. It would be pretty insane.
- PaulKeeble 3y agoNot feasible on even 240 Volt AC at all, would have to be high voltage all the way to the charger as the cabling is unworkable. Its completely impractical otherwise and its going to require big changes to the grid.
- jtc331 3y agoDC fast chargers are already 400V or 800V, so we’ve long since crossed the limits of AC charging at home.
- sam_lowry_ 3y agoMost of Europe is connected to 400V 3-phase grid. When limited at a pretty common 40A, this delivers up to 16kW. Tesla Superchargers routinely charge at 150kW. I'd say they are well above 800V.
- tzs 3y agoPresumably that would be at charging stations, not at home. Those would be located in commercial areas where they could get the kind of power feed that medium to large buildings get, which is typically 3 phase 13800 V, and can be thousands of kW.
- tuatoru 3y agoYeah, what are your distribution voltages in the States, 13 kV maybe? That'd only be about 50 amps if so. 10mm diameter cables would be OK. Workable with a battery swap station next to a substation.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- IanCal 3y agoIt is but it's not orders of magnitude away from current chargers. The fastest I know of are 350kW currently.
- bestham 3y agoToyota is one of the top innovators in the world when it comes to manufacturing. The reason Tesla is able to produce millions of Model 3 is partly because they are applying the lessons learned from the Toyota production system (TPS). Toyota have a lot of experience of electrification, they just have not produced a lot of vehicles with a charging plug. Toyota will deliver EVs that good enough to compete with all other manufacturers and their EVs will come with the hallmark Toyota reliability. The reason that their current EVs have so low range is pure conservatism from their side. The batteries are over provisioned and the current iterations of EVs are more of a Prime without the gas engine than a pure EV platform. They are the tortoise. Be wary of betting against them.
- acdha 3y agoNobody is saying they don’t have a good history or tons of resources but company leadership is not a constant. They blew a multi-decade lead and do not appear to be reacting well enough to catch up – likely because their senior people need to admit that their hydrogen gamble failed, which is hard enough even when it doesn’t involve multi-billion dollar write-offs. This is especially so because hydrogen worked out exactly how basically everyone else predicted it would when they made that bet, so they can’t claim nobody could have foreseen this outcome.
- _hypx 3y agoThis is BEV propaganda. Toyota's hydrogen bet has yet to be even tested. There is a very good chance that batteries get disrupted by hydrogen. In that scenario, almost everyone is decades behind Toyota.
- wlesieutre 3y agoTesla wanted BEVs to happen, so they built their own nationwide charging network. Toyota wants hydrogen vehicles to happen, so they've sat around hoping someone else solves the refueling network problem for them. So far this strategy hasn't worked out. Are there any signs of that changing?
- rgbrenner 3y agoI see way too many Toyota battery articles for a company that can barely put out an EV. They're all promises... in the future, they swear they'll beat everyone, but they just released a Lexus EV at $60k with 196mi range and 5sec 0-60.
- itsoktocry 3y ago>5sec 0-60. When did this become a metric that mattered to any normal person? Do you even know the 0-60 of your car? Do you realize how quick 5 second is to 60mph? Most sports cars of a generation ago couldn't touch that. Why do you feel it needs to be faster? It's plain dangerous to inexperienced drivers.
- doublepg23 3y agoAren’t Lexus cars luxury?
- pipeline_peak 3y agoTo some, to others they’re just Toyotas with leather seats ;)
- AtlasBarfed 3y agoLexus is the new Cadillacs they might have a 400 horsepower engine and really high performance but the people that drive them drive them like slugs. They're the cars of old conservative rich people that don't buy American and primarily considered reliability
- rgbrenner 3y agoI do know the 0-60 of my car... but that's not the point. I just want to make sure the reader doesn't think the range is low because it's some high performance car. It's just a normal Lexus suv that's not up to par in the EV category.
- RosanaAnaDana 3y agoIdk what the 0-60 of my leaf is but I beat every one off the line when I want to. It makes me far more comfortable on the freeway to get all the power I want on demand to quickly and safely make a maneuver. I would never have considered it before owning an EV, but now that I have one, I'll definitely be considerate of it in my next EV purchase. Previously I had only had crappy used ICE vehicles, and the acceleration was so bad it had never occurred to me how much better driving could be with good acceleration. I probably wouldn't include it in my calculus for an ICE vehicle, but I'll probably never purchase another ICE vehicle either.
- zactato 3y agoI'm surprised their battery technology isn't just a tank of hydrogen that's shaped like a normal EV battery.
- willmadden 3y agoIt would have terrible range with the same footprint. Hydrogen has great energy density by mass but terrible energy density by volume. The tank needs to be huge (but it would be light).
- _hypx 3y agoHydrogen has a higher energy density by volume compared to a li-ion battery. People really need to check their fact here.
- willmadden 3y agoI meant compared to gasoline.
- fragmede 3y agoHydrogen is a gas, which expands or compresses to fill all available space, so its density varies. People really need to check their understanding of physics here.
- Alupis 3y agoI would assume, but perhaps be wrong, that it would be liquid Hydrogen pumped into a vehicle's tank, and much like a tank of propane, the liquid expands back into a gas as pressure decreases (due to consumption). Hydrogen vehicles have the advantage of being refillable in minutes, much like petrol based vehicles - yet the only byproduct is water vapor, making them completely environmentally friendly. Hydrogen is also hugely abundant, and renewable in the sense that the water vapor could theoretically be split again via some other process. I would really like to know more about why Hydrogen vehicles did not take off as much as electric. They seem superior in many ways. My guess would be the chicken and egg problem - few Hydrogen refilling stations nation-wide vs. you can plug in at home and charge for 18 hours or whatever.
- Prcmaker 3y ago>Note established driving range includes aerodynamic and vehicle weight improvements. While some of these improvements rely on a switch to electric, I would love to see as many of these implemented in a much shorter term.
- acdha 3y agoYeah, as an American these things are always surreal - I grew up in the 80s when vehicles were getting heavily optimized for air resistance and weight so it’s weird seeing it as an improvement for vehicles to get … lower MPG than the car my dad bought when I was in elementary school and the most popular models are basically “what if we took a brick and added macho decorations along with a 40% markup?”
- eloop 3y agoFUD isn't enough to maintain market dominance indefinitely, just ask Microsoft.
- Rebelgecko 3y agoAm I parsing this properly? 2 months ago, Toyota pushed back the release of their solid state batteries to 2026. Now it'll be 2027-2028? Maybe we'll get in-car cold fusion first.
- PaulKeeble 3y agoToyota has absolutely nothing for the EV age having bet the house on hydrogen and failing that just ICE. Now they are scrambling and making promises on research when they have nothing remotely to suggest they can do what they are promising, not even a prototype.
- _hypx 3y agoIt takes no effort to make an EV. They are the simplest type of car imaginable. They even pre-date ICE cars.
- two_handfuls 3y agoTrue. But it takes a lot of effort to make a competitive EV. The competition has optimized air and rolling resistance, battery chemistry, and battery cooling/management software.
- _hypx 3y agoThat's nothing compared to all conventional cars.
- maximus-decimus 3y agoJudging from the fact their EV was losing its wheels, there's also the problem of handling the extra torque, although I can't imagine that would take long to fix if they care at all.
- _hypx 3y ago
- bookofjoe 3y agohttps://archive.ph/nU8rH https://archive.ph/nU8rH
- jacknews 3y agoI'll believe it when I see it. There seems to be a lot of noise, confusion and FUD coming from Toyota lately.
- creshal 3y ago> There seems to be a lot of noise, confusion and FUD coming from Toyota lately. Not really? The old CEO with his irrational hate of all-electric cars left, and Toyota is now free to catch up with the rest of the industry. And the best way to catch up has always been to leapfrog a tech generation ahead, rather than trying to copy what the competition designed last year.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- manxman 3y agoYou think the problem is just the CEO and not the corporate culture or its complacency and arrogance and now confusion now that it's no longer the darling of Wall Street/The Nikkei? It's yet another Japanese zombie corporation that's lost its way.
- threeseed 3y ago> It's yet another Japanese zombie corporation that's lost its way Toyota's revenue is up 24.2% since last year [1]. I think Tesla would love to be a zombie corporation with those numbers. [1] https://pressroom.toyota.com/tmc-announces-april-through-june-2023-financial-results/ https://pressroom.toyota.com/tmc-announces-april-through-jun...
- manxman 3y agoRevenue is vanity. Profit is sanity. Many a large corporation had revenue growth even when the writing was on the wall for their business model.
- Jyaif 3y agoThe headline does not match the content of the article: "At a news conference last week, Toyota president Koji Sato also admitted that production volumes of solid-state batteries were likely to be small when the company rolls them out in electric vehicles as early as 2027." and in fact Toyota may actually be late to the game: "Other companies have also made progress recently. Chinese battery maker CATL revealed it was preparing to mass-produce its semi-solid batteries before the year’s end, while South Korea’s Samsung SDI has completed a fully automated pilot line for solid-state batteries."
- specialist 3y ago> Toyota may actually be late to the game For passenger BEVs, maybe. For many reasons, none of them related to batteries. For batteries? No way. Demand far exceeds supply. Every battery made for the next 10 years will be bought by some one. Battery technology is mapped out for 10-15 years. Every battery startup (cathodes, anodes, minerals, process, etc, etc) has a general plan to "skate to where the puck will be", and hopefully get there before competitors. Any one starting a gigafactory today knows what kind of batteries they'll be making (at scale) in 5 years and what their market share will be. The trick is being profitable. And Toyota has a pretty good chance. Mostly because they have access to (cheaper) capital. And maybe because they can lean on their long relationships with Panasonic and the like.
- rootusrootus 3y agoHasn't Toyota made largely similar claims just about every year or so? Why do we believe this time is different?
- rcMgD2BwE72F 3y agoThey only started in 2009.
- 1970-01-01 3y ago5 years away is not near.
- rcMgD2BwE72F 3y agoIs it not? It's coming soon after 2015 https://www.drive.com.au/news/toyota-develops-more-efficient-battery-tenfold-improvement-in-capacity-may-be-possible/ https://www.drive.com.au/news/toyota-develops-more-efficient...
- Ajay-p 3y agoI think Toyota will be successful with the production of solid state batteries but the article does not appear to offer new information. Only that there are delays, but progress is still continuing.
- rcMgD2BwE72F 3y agoI won't hold my breath https://www.drive.com.au/news/toyota-develops-more-efficient-battery-tenfold-improvement-in-capacity-may-be-possible/ https://www.drive.com.au/news/toyota-develops-more-efficient... >If the Japanese automaker does decide to put it into a production car, don't expect it to arrive on the scene until sometime after 2015.
- quietbritishjim 3y agoThat quote is not in that article, which is from 2017. Did you mean to link to something else?
- BaculumMeumEst 3y agoI’m seeing an article written in 2009 that includes his quote.
- jjoonathan 3y agoThat article is from 2009 about Toyota announcing a 10x lithium ion wonder-battery due in ~2015. That didn't happen. Now, in 2023, Toyota promises a solid-state wonder-battery soon (tm). Since wonder-battery announcements from Toyota have proven unreliable before we shouldn't hold our breath for today's wonder-battery announcement from Toyota.
- arghwhat 3y agoThis article of this post announces that they, after a published "breakthrough" earlier this year, is closing in on mass production capability with 2028 being Toyota's suggested target. That article shared in this comment thread announces the start of development of a new battery technology, with the author sharing their opinion on the possible delivery date - not Toyota. But regardless of whether Toyota succeeds according to their schedule, holding your breath for 5 years or more is not recommended.
- quietbritishjim 3y agoThey must have edited their comment. It had a link to a Forbes article from 2017 when I posted my reply.
- thiago_fm 3y agoI hope they are successful on this. Japanese carmakers are really good and well-disciplined on building it with quality and also cheaply, I'm really excited about what they'll bring. I've always enjoyed Toyotas, I have one. Toyotas are always cheaper than the alternative and extremely reliable.
- hijinks 3y agowouldnt hold your breathe.. they've been claiming solid state has been around the corner since like 2010
- thiago_fm 3y agoStill better than the kind of promises you'd get from Elon Musk, costing you 10K to get a FSD system to drive you into a wall. I like the fact that they show their intent without making you pay for it
- robertlagrant 3y agoWell, he's also jump-started all of car electrification. I agree FSD is bad, but unless you paid for it, it's a weird thing to focus on given the bigger picture impact Tesla and Musk have had.
- 1-6 3y ago“It’s better to be an optimist who is sometimes wrong than a pessimist who is almost always right” Mark Twain
- hef19898 3y agoAnd there is promising the moon and delivering a tennis ball, and that years late...
- amalcon 3y agoI've got plenty of gripes with Musk -- not the least of which are Tesla's marketing of assistive driving technologies, which the folks there had to know would be misleading. I think this is somewhat unfair, though: that $10k is for a software unlock. Battery tech is hardware. Toyota can't charge extra for advanced batteries before said batteries are ready for mass production, for obvious reasons -- so they didn't really have the opportunity to engage in this kind of broken promise.
- lemper 3y agoif the distance to the goal is 100km and them yodas crawling an inch per year, it still counts as "nearing." how is the actual progress and its rate, though?
- randcraw 3y agoBasically the same story from Electrek, dated Oct 12 (no paywall): https://electrek.co/2023/10/12/toyota-joins-race-to-try-and-bring-solid-state-batteries-to-mass-production/ https://electrek.co/2023/10/12/toyota-joins-race-to-try-and-...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- mlinhares 3y agoNow waiting for the catch here because this sounds too good to be true.
- j45 3y agoIf you read into it some more Toyota has had this tech for a while, it’s real and it seems to work. Since battery life like this might be a step change, it will leave most EV manufacturers behind if they don’t have an answer. EV buyers may want to consider a used EV until new tech comes out, since old or current tech is not always worth paying new prices for. It might also be a factor in the relationship between Toyota and Tesla growing in the last week.
- SCdF 3y agoI know what you mean, but until they release it in a production car it's not really real, if you know what I mean.
- j45 3y agoAbsolutely. It's a battery pack though, not a car. Does Toyota have cars with battery packs this battery could be swapped into? That run only on electric for some of the time (Prime). Maybe it's closer than it seems.
- mikestew 3y agoEV buyers may want to consider a used EV until new tech comes out I'm not basing my purchase decisions on pie-in-the-sky press releases from Toyota and wild-ass guesses from some random person on the Internet. Build a car, Toyota, then we'll talk. Or maybe I'll just buy a Tesla instead, I've heard that their "Full Self-Driving" is just a few months away.
- j45 3y agoI get your "standard". It's why my recommendation is to actually go look at Toyota's tech. It's not hypothetical or in development. Their solid state batteries are known to exist and be ready to go. "I think I found Toyota's battery" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36980630 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36980630 Which refers to " https://www.nature.com/articles/s41563-022-01421-z https://www.nature.com/articles/s41563-022-01421-z" Maybe some patenting stuff under way? I don't know. Toyota did predict this for a few years ago but things were shut down for the pandemic. Fun reads: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=toyota+battery https://hn.algolia.com/?q=toyota+battery Older teslas driving features are more reliable than the current ones. It sounds like training the AI driving systems with synthetic data is helping speed up progress. Another fn area to read.
- the-dude 3y agoThis is a peculiar marketing strategy. This 'news' has been pushed about every month in the last ~6 months, and even before in 2021 there have been similar 'stories'. But there is no battery. But they are near. Here is one from 2021 : https://www.motortrend.com/news/toyota-battery-bev-hev-solid-state-future-investment/ https://www.motortrend.com/news/toyota-battery-bev-hev-solid... Enter the rabbit hole : https://hn.algolia.com/?q=toyota+battery https://hn.algolia.com/?q=toyota+battery
- yumraj 3y agoI think they are learning from Musk.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- 303uru 3y agoThis is "luddite" fodder. Don't buy an EV now, better batteries are coming!!! Soon, we promise, just wait. In the meantime check out this ice vehicle!
- warble 3y agoNot to mention that this kind of range isn't helpful, it would be much more useful to make the battery smaller and lighter and stay with a 300 mile range. The vehicle would be cheaper and much more efficient overall. This is the kind of headline a marketing department would write.
- j-a-a-p 3y agoAfter reading the links you mentioned I do not support your opinion that Toyota is pushing this or a similar story since 2021. On the contrary, they announce huge investments and research breakthroughs for years now, but only now they are starting to announce mass production.
- Workaccount2 3y agoToyota has been going hard on this story, no surprise since they dug a grave of irrelevance by anchoring themselves to hydrogen for decades. Even when it was clear EVs were the future and interest in hydrogen was barely registering. Also no surprise that they have nothing to show except a "just wait 5 years!".
- moomoo11 3y agoWould hydrogen make sense for really heavy vehicles like bus or truck, or even train? I think for cars it isn’t the most convenient. But at the same time hydrogen would be cool if it works because it’s so abundant. And it’s pretty cool that the hydrogen cars exhaust water.
- jansan 3y agoHydrogen can only work if the infrastructure is available. If you have a few hubs with a lot of traffic between them, it could make a lot of sense. Having said this, I have seen quite a few Toyota Mirai taxis in Berlin. I am wondering if they ever have range anxiety or problems finding a fuel station.
- adrianN 3y agoAt least for trains, batteries are already preferable to hydrogen and the technology is still being improved.
- jeffbee 3y ago> dug a grave of irrelevance A grave of irrelevance so deep that they are the world's largest automaker and their net margins just hit an all-time high. Sometimes I do wonder from which planet these HN remarks are sent.
- adrianN 3y agoA company often does best right before its terminal decline. Betting on the wrong horse for too long is usually not a good sign.
- 3y ago
- vlamingsjef 3y agoBy 2027 - 2028 according to this article: https://spectrum.ieee.org/toyota-solid-state-battery https://spectrum.ieee.org/toyota-solid-state-battery
- nelsonic 3y agoThis battery breakthrough has been reported many times but commercialisation is always 3 years off which is the typical purchasing/leasing cycle for vehicles. I cannot help but think this is Toyota - widely known for being way behind in EV sales - trying to induce an Osborne Effect to discourage consumers from buying the competing products of the current generation and instead wait for Toyota’s “breakthrough” next gen product … https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_effect https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_effect
- huytersd 3y agoI’ll believe it when I see it. Near breakthrough means nothing, “near commercialization” maybe but it seems like they haven’t even discovered the breakthrough yet.
- isoprophlex 3y agoWith current electricity infrastructure, won't that completely saturate the grid and/or be problematic for people wanting to actually put the chargers somewhere? We're talking megawatts here, and (at least over here) getting a grid connection of more than a couple of hundred kilowatts means serious talks with the grid operators. Because larger max loads mean larger potential impact on the grid when your load suddenly switches on, there is a progressive fee where a 0.1 MW versus a 1 MW rated connection is not simply 10x cheaper. Absent huge investments in the grid, I think the only thing you could do is put these on prem with power production, or put up a big battery near the charger that you fill up at a lower rate? Not an expert, but I wrote simulation code for "virtual power plants" so industrial sites with electricity producers, consumers and storage could simulate their loads to help spec the grid connections to their sites... this is what I vaguely remember from the business end of things.
- Crye 3y agoYes and no, 1200km charged in 10 mins is somewhere around 1MW of peak load. that's manageable and readily available using off the shelf distribution equipment, but it is a lot. The equipment is by no means cheap and large charging sites would almost always require upstream distribution and transmission upgrades, but this is something utilities are planning for. I suspect we'll also start to see on site energy storage to help offset the demand charges that these sites could see.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- cagenut 3y agowhat is it about hacker news where only the worst marketing fluff about batteries is ever upvoted onto the front page? every time the comments section decends into a combination of bitter laments about the state of journalism, random topic-adjacent bloviating, meta-commentary about the industry/market context (american's chattin about cars!), tangential speculation about other battery tech. its so purely content free. you never learn something. why does HN work this way?
- foobarian 3y agoAgent Moulder said it best: "I want to believe"
- technofiend 3y agoThis reads the same as "Oh, is climate change really real? Maybe we should just wait and see", only with buying electric cars now instead of Toyota's maybe someday super battery car.
- Arnt 3y agoTen minutes. Is that lots of kW from the charger, or does it already pass 1MW?
- jeffbee 3y agoThat is an avalanche of current and you've hit on the reason the whole EV thing isn't going to work out the way some boosters think. The amount of infrastructure necessary to charge these things is ridiculous. A step-down transformer that can accomplish this feat costs a quarter million dollars, net of the pad and the wires and installation. It might be more globally efficient to re-do the entire grid as HVDC, but that might cost a few dollars as well. Far, far better systemic solutions exist, such as walking and buses and electric rail for humans, and reserving ultra-high-power EVs for cases where the payload actually needed to be moved, such as deliveries.
- regularfry 3y agoThe thing is that if the market has already determined that Tesla's range and charge time is OK, then building a car with the same range with the shiny new tech just makes the whole vehicle lighter, by an unsubtle amount. It's hard to tell from the press release, but the implication is that they've doubled the energy density. Right now if you assume 500kg of battery and you replace that with 250kg of battery in otherwise the same 2000kg car (which is now 1750kg), that's a 12% weight saving. That's going to show up as a measurably longer range all on its own.
- regularfry 3y agoYes, just. Using a very rough 14kWh/100km from Tesla as a benchmark, 1200km would be 12x14=168kWh. That much energy in 10 minutes comes out as 1005988W.
- hakcermani 3y ago.. possibly a battery swap, a domestic setting getting to those MWs is out of the question. a 200 amp circuit in US at 220v is just about 44KW ..
- tyronehed 3y ago[dead]
- bparsons 3y agoIt's a big deal. New products in auto manufacturing are planned on a 5 year cycle, which is why it is being discussed now. Toyota is the biggest auto manufacturer on the planet. They don't make wild bets or predictions that they don't believe to be fully achievable.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- 0xbadc0de5 3y agoVaporware alert.
- renewiltord 3y agoThat's nothing. I have a 1300 km range, 9-min charge battery. Releasing next year. Uses memristors.
- bb123 3y agoAs with all news about battery technology, I will believe it when I can go out and buy it. Until then it is vapourware. Does anyone know why battery technology in particular is so rife with these "A battery that NEVER needs charging is just 3 years away!!!" Type press releases?
- dtx1 3y agoIt's a combination of different factors. First of all there's a great demand for fast charging, high capacity, long lasting batteries. Especially in Cars but also in just about everything else. Second, the Battery Industry is on an exponential curve in terms of capacity [0]. Lastly, we can make all kinds of "better" batteries in the lab. Faster charging, higher density, longer lasting, ... The Main Issue is that any battery advancement needs to be better in all aspects and you need to build mass manufacturing infrastructure to keep the price down. Thus, we get these massive underestimations of the timeframes. However, Batteries do improve all the time. For example, look at the LG Chem INR21700 M50. Compare it to the best cells that were available before it (adjusting for 18650 form factor) and you'll see a noticeable, albeit incremental upgrade that is mass market available and cheap. Those were likely the fabled 21700 Tesla Cells that Musk was gushing over a few years ago. [0] https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Evolution-of-the-battery-capacity-since-the-mid-80s-until-now_fig5_350093457 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Evolution-of-the-battery...
- tenthirtyam 3y agoI see some comments on a problem here - the charger will have to deliver appx 1MW. Well, maybe there could be charging stations powered by diesel generators... /s
- wolverine876 3y agoDoes anyone know the energy density of these batteries? I wonder about the applications for flying. Also, I wonder about the military implications - the logistics of energy are a major limitation, as far as I understand.
- spacemadness 3y agoWake me when it’s real.
- malablaster 3y ago932 miles is suspiciously specific.
- corbezzoli 3y agoRange = this new battery’s capacity / some car’s average “MPG” This produced an “exact” number out of consumption averages. The public doesn’t yet know what “250 kWh” means.
- dangus 3y agoWhoever wrote that converted 1500km to miles and rounded (= 932.057 miles)
- tooltalk 3y agoThat's just very misleading though: the 980 miles battery in a light, compact EV, eg, M3, isn't going to deliver the same range in a pick-up truck, eg, the Hummer EV. It's just an open invitation for abuse (and has already been abused by battery makers like CATL who recently announced a new improved LFP with 4C charging and 750 miles range??).
- s1artibartfast 3y agoIt is 1500 km translated for US readers.
- taspeotis 3y ago1500km is suspiciously specific. What next, I'll go to the shops and buy EXACTLY two litres of milk? 12 eggs?? https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/002/546/187/fb1.jpg https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/002/546/187/fb1...
- wolverine876 3y agoIt's interesting that HN discussions overwhelmingly use Imperial/English/American/whatever - to the point where people sometimes don't consider that metric is common in the real world. There's a fairly international and highly technical population here.
- KingLancelot 3y ago[dead]
- speed_spread 3y agoWhy is the "solid electrolyte" encased in an hourglass-shaped buttplug?
- rokkitmensch 3y agoThat's the next-gen portable battery for your ebike. Wireless power transmission through your pants.
- gonzo 3y agoFor your viewing pleasure
- valianteffort 3y agoOi what the fuck, you weren't kidding
- idontwantthis 3y agoIf a Model 3 LR is 75kwh, and this is roughly 3x the range, and that takes roughly 20 minutes to go 10-80% at a supercharger then can anyone tell me what kind of hardware would be required to charge a 225kwh battery in the same time? Is it remotely feasible to build at least 100,000 of those chargers all over the world? Sounds like each one would need a gigantic capacitor or flywheel on site.
- cglace 3y agoHow often are you driving 1800 miles in a day.
- idontwantthis 3y agoNever, but I’m trying to understand what the experience would be like. If you charge at home then you are looking at like 2 days to fully charge at 240v. What I’m wondering is if these ranges are necessary or realistic for electric cars even if the storage tech is there. Maybe 4-500 miles is the max anyone would want regardless of how long charging could theoretically take if you were connected directly to a nuclear generator or something.
- rapsey 3y agoBut why would you need to fully charge? What matters is charging enough in a day to cover your daily needs.
- idontwantthis 3y agoOK but then why have the battery capacity? It isn’t free in dollars or grams. Probably more likely we get smaller and smaller batteries and the range stays roughly constant. Will be amazing for trucks and aircraft though. Truck stations on highways could potentially each have massive hookups or even their own solar and battery plants.
- rapsey 3y ago
- tjmc 3y agoI wish articles like this would standardise on W/kg or W/L. Range is meaningless when you don't know the pack size.
- recursive 3y agoIt's still quite meaningful. It's the distance you could allegedly drive without recharging.
- interstice 3y agoDrive what though
- recursive 3y agoThe car.
- serpix 3y agoIn what temperature, gradient, tires, road type, traffic or speed? kWh is better.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- MBCook 3y ago…why? I get range anxiety is a thing. But no one needs that kind of range in a car. Why not make it 400mi/650km and save a ton of weight? The battery here gives double the range of an Accord. Who needs that? Less battery is less weight. That’s better for tires, roads, charge times, brakes, accidents, acceleration, drivability, cost, and probably more. 250mi is plenty. For most even less. But there’s a psychological factor, I get that. Outside something like a truck that’s going to get a very low mi/kwh when towing no one needs that much battery.
- ta8645 3y agoLikely because it alleviates the need to always be charging, whenever you're not on the road. Not having to make special arrangements for a charging station at work. Or for example, sharing a charging station at home instead of requiring your own, because you only need to charge every other day, etc. It would make owning an EV less tedious.
- srustagi 3y agotowing + cold most likely?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- sowbug 3y agoIt's a paradox. Everyone thinking about buying an EV worries about range, but nobody who has an EV worries about range. You charge your car at night, just like your phone. So it effectively takes zero time to charge, and you always get a full day out of it. It's different from gas cars, the same way smartphones required new charging habits compared to a Nokia 3310 with its two-week battery life. (And yes, if you live in an apartment or don't have a parking space, this sucks and it doesn't work for you. Same as if you used to charge your 3310 only at your girlfriend's house on weekends because you lost your charger a year before, and then you switched to a smartphone and needed to figure something else out. Conceded.)
- SubiculumCode 3y ago
- Kimm0n0 3y agoThe funny thing is that Toyota for years have said they had this technology in development, but they ended up purchasing the tech from another company.
- outside1234 3y agoIn automotive the OEMs almost exclusively purchase from suppliers like this and develop very little actually in house directly. That said, they can be heavily involved in its development, like it sounds in this case. This is partly done for liability reasons (supplier takes the liability if this battery catches on fire, not Toyota)
- ChatGTP 3y agoIn Japan development might mean going out for drinks with the other company :)