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Toyota aims to launch the ' first' all-solid-state EV batteries
- johnea 1y agoIt's great news to see Japanese auto makers coming onboard with EVs in a serious way. The capabilities of solid state batteries are just one example of the wide open opportunities for EVs that internal combustion can just never have. While storage, and generation, of electricity has a huge ability to evolve and advance, gasoline and other petro products have an inherent amount of chemical energy per volume that can never be changed. An EV with 1000 mile range is in the mid-term future, while here in the US we'll be focused on delivering the world's largest coal fired pickup truck 8-/
- rasz 1y agoPromises of something 'in 3 years' is not in any way serious while selling mediocre overpriced EV right now. This is Toyota standard stalling while hoping their beloved Hydrogen somehow happens in the mean time.
- jfengel 1y agoI do not get why Toyota is so wedded to hydrogen. There's no infrastructure for it. It would require a far bigger revamp than the switch to BEVs. There's no existing hydrogen source, and the stuff is tricky to transport and store. If they had a hydrogen source for cheap, it would have been so much easier to just transform it into hydrocarbons. They're easier to store, easier to transport, and all of the existing structure is already built around it. Just keep on making the same engines you always have. They already had a lead in battery-powered hybrids. It would have made so much more sense to lean into that, first into plugin hybrids and then plugin-only. Hydrogen is such an obvious dead end, and everybody sees it but them -- the ones who should have been the first to figure it out. I just don't get it.
- formerly_proven 1y ago> I do not get why Toyota is so wedded to hydrogen. There's no infrastructure for it. It would require a far bigger revamp than the switch to BEVs. There's no existing hydrogen source, and the stuff is tricky to transport and store. I think the answer is really simple and basically the same as for where this headline comes from: FUD about EVs so people instead buy a Toyota gas car while pretending to be eco. > They already had a lead in battery-powered hybrids. It would have made so much more sense to lean into that, first into plugin hybrids and then plugin-only. That was twenty years ago though. Just like twenty years ago "hydrogen cars" sounded like a possible solution.
- filloooo 1y agoBecause they are a JP company, over there they have no way of cheaply producing the electricity needed, already relying on natural gas imports, hydrogen needs only a few more steps on top of it to make.
- hvb2 1y agoI have no idea what a 1000 mile radius is good for. I would rather have 400 miles and a lighter car. There are some commercial applications maybe but nothing else?
- altcognito 1y agoIt's still all about charging in general. If it takes a 8 hours to deliver 50 and you drive 80 miles a day, you'll want a buffer of miles to prevent, having an extra buffer might get you through to a period where you aren't driving as much. Or you can make longer trips without refill. Or you can worry less about inefficiencies at lower temps.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- bdamm 1y agoTrucks. Inter-city Buses. Extremely lightweight EVs (think Mazda Miata EV). Also EV motor homes, but that's basically just a bus.
- childintime 1y agoAbout EV motor homes: battery capacity for domestic use is plenty in any EV. Powerwalls have much less capacity. So I'd buy a EV motor home with minimal range, like 100 miles. When stationary the capacity is only limited by the solar panels on top (~1.5kW peak). Then again, maybe my use isn't typical. I'd wish for solar panels mounts as standard for EV vans, with potentially full roof coverage.
- dghlsakjg 1y agoFor a variety of reasons it is interesting. Max charge rate is frequently dependent on battery size. A larger battery can absorb more power per unit of time. If you get 50% range in an hour of fast charging, the 1000 mile range car is much better for long distance travel. Having to only charge your car every 1k miles opens up a lot of use cases. People living in places where they have to street park, and can't charge at night, might feel a lot better about electric cars if they only have to charge once a month. Towing range is a major issue with the current generation of electric vehicles. Auxiliary power uses are also appealing to a lot of people. 1000 miles of range can also translate to 500 miles of range and 100kw of power. Think about ambulances, cop cars and other service vehicles that just run their engines for an entire shift to keep the electricity flowing. Plenty of people travel with generators for personal and professional reasons. No need if your car has power to spare.
- johnea 1y agoReally disappointing replies 8-/ The main point: electric storage and generation has a huge capacity for innovation and improvement, versus petro combustion's fixed chemical energy. The 1000 mile range is just one example of that capacity for improvement, and somehow that's the only thing anyone could comment on?
- Simulacra 1y agoI'm thrilled with this idea, but I also saw an article very similar to this years ago. I won't pretend to understand the engineering behind it, but I would like to understand exactly how far into the future this will apear. Is it feasible that this could actually happen in 2027?
- Animats 1y agoIn 2027-2028. Comment in the article: The big company who doesn't have a competitive product attempts to mess up the market by making bold announcements of fantastic products that are coming "soon". Everybody serious, except Tesla, has a solid-state battery program. Here's an overview of where various car makers are.[1] There are a few prototype cars running around on all solid state batteries now. The problem is developing a cheap production process. Most of the big players are saying first production vehicles in 2027, solid state technology takes over around 2030. There's an interim "semi solid state" technology that's already in some cars. It's one of those stopgap ideas destined to go away, like "mild hybrids". [1] https://insideevs.com/news/771402/every-solid-state-battery-ev/ https://insideevs.com/news/771402/every-solid-state-battery-...
- Animats 1y agoWe can get a picture of the cost problem from this.[1] Samsung is about to put tiny solid state batteries in their watches, rings, and earbuds, but they still cost too much for phones. [1] https://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_to_use_solidstate_batteries_for_upcoming_rings_earbuds_and_watches-news-67198.php https://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_to_use_solidstate_batteries...
- tim333 1y agoThat's a point. If solid state batteries are going to be a thing you'd expect to see them phones and laptops before cars.
- justin66 1y agoI don’t think that’s necessarily true. Cells in cars can be managed in ways cells in laptops and phones cannot, because of the built in redundancy. That might matter.
- bdamm 1y agoTesla bought a solid-state battery company and also is running a research office dedicated to the subject, so I don't think you can say that Tesla has no solid-state battery program.
- cs702 1y agoThat headline needs a few edits to make it, you know, accurate: "Toyota believes it will launch all-solid-state EV batteries by year-end 2027." My understanding is that 2027 is wishful thinking, due to high manufacturing costs.
- guywithahat 1y agoWhat is actually happening is they're building a the Toyota Battery Manufacturing, North Carolina (TBMNC) (https://archive.ph/wip/y9iBR https://archive.ph/wip/y9iBR), which is slated to open this year. This factory has nothing to do with solid state batteries, and it makes me wonder how serious their solid state battery claim really is
- t1234s 1y agoIs solid state for more durability (1m+ charge cycles) or performance (fast discharge, plaid) or both?
- choilive 1y agoSafety
- t1234s 1y agoWith LFP being supposedly more safe than NMC would it have a weight benefit as well?
- randerson 1y agoAlso better performance, since solid state batteries are lighter. More flexible car layouts and longer range since they're more compact. Faster charging due to reduced resistance. More stable in extreme cold or hot temperatures. It truly will revolutionize EVs if they can mass produce these.
- germinalphrase 1y agoCan anyone recommend a good source that quantifies these qualities against LFP/NMC benchmarks?
- rawgabbit 1y agoSolid state promises to be safer. Less likely to self-ignite when the battery degrades. The quick charging and performance are a bonus.
- legitster 1y agoA solid state battery has no liquid components. So that should mean more longevity, safety, weight reductions, capacity per pound, and more forgiving thermal properties. It cannot be understated what an overall improvement it would represent if the technology pans out.
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- eisa01 1y agoToyota's solid-state EV battery promises are almost as bad as Elon's full self driving timeline Only exception is that they give themselves a bit more lead time "early 2020's" in 2017. Probably because they have an interest to delay competitors EV sales, while Elon is pumping FSD sales Will be interesting to see which technology comes to market first https://www.axios.com/2017/12/15/toyota-claims-a-leap-that-would-vastly-increase-electric-car-range-1513304437 https://www.axios.com/2017/12/15/toyota-claims-a-leap-that-w...
- simondotau 1y agoA few choice headlines: 2017: "Toyota’s new solid-state battery could make its way to cars by 2020" https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/25/toyotas-new-solid-state-battery-could-make-its-way-to-cars-by-2020/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/25/toyotas-new-solid-state-ba... 2020: "Toyota's game-changing solid-state battery en route for 2021 debut" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25400725 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25400725 2023: "Toyota Touts Solid State EVs with 932-Mile Range, 10-Minute Charging by 2027" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36353474 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36353474 2023: "Toyota Only Plans to Make Enough Solid-State Batteries for 10k Cars in 2030" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38374322 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38374322
- LightBug1 1y agoAt least there's an actual, verifiable end result for Toyota. I don't see that for Schrödinger's FSD.
- recursive 1y agoIt's verifiable in the sense that you can check whether they followed through, and they did not? How is that better?
- LightBug1 1y agoAt some point, either Toyota will have delivered or not. Whereas Tesla have been saying FSD is amazing and breakthrough technology for years now and yet and, as a novelty, it is, kind of. Still needs human intervention. And I wouldn't trust my family with it at all. ymmv So, we're back at the heart of the basic criticism it's had for years. They've been selling this dud for years, and it's still not feature ready. Schrödinger.
- ajdude 1y ago* in 2027
- testing22321 1y agoToyota’s strategy for the last many years: “We’re going to release a breakthrough EV in the kind of near future. Don’t buy an EV now” (instead keep buying our ICE vehicles!) Getting very old at this point.
- carabiner 1y agoAnd it was the correct strategy: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/09/business/toyotas-hybrid-electric-vehicles.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/09/business/toyotas-hybrid-e... The best selling vehicle in the US is the RAV4, and not any EV.
- AtlasBarfed 1y agoThe correct strategy would have been to basically within 10 years of the release of the insight and the Prius, to mandate hybrid electric vehicles for all consumer vehicles, and 20 years after they, phevs. You may be technically right because our policy is idiotic, and the chances of this happening unde the bush administration was zero. But don't pretend this is some optimal engineering formula you've reduced in an economic journal.
- kulahan 1y agoSimilarly, you should not pretend this strategy you've posted above is some optimal engineering formula you've reduced in an economic journal. There are many roadblocks to consider before mandating all vehicles go electric, not least among them being an electrical grid which simply cannot handle this level of energy, a lack of access to enough lithium, or tax considerations for vehicles no longer contributing to highways (while creating an order of magnitude more damage) because they don't buy gas.
- lern_too_spel 1y agoYou didn't address GP's proposed policy. Hybrids and PHEVs need a lot less lithium than full EVs. The electrical grid can already handle off peak charging of many more EVs than are on the road today. It's straightforward to replace gasoline taxes with electricity taxes and car registration fees, which could also vary by weight, but many states are going further and implementing road usage fees, which can be done by reporting odometer readings.
- legitster 1y agoEveryone is poo-pooing this, but in car development years, 2027 is really soon. Their announcement was not that they were about to have their breakthrough, but they are setting up production. And specifically that they are announcing manufacturing partners - this is not "looking for potential factory sites" this is tooling up existing factories. A lot of other companies are saying 2027-2028 so I'm thinking this could be the real deal.
- recursive 1y agoIt might be the real deal, but the last half dozen times they said it, it wasn't. They don't have much credibility with these statements.
- legitster 1y agoI think this is a bit unfair. In 2017 said they were going to have the technology by 2021. They are a couple of years late, but they say they have the technology in test cars now and are moving to production. Given it was over 20 years before Lithium batteries were first proposed and when they were commercially viable, we're probably being a bit harsh.
- unclad5968 1y agoIf someone says they'll have something by 2021 and they don't have it in 2025, you've adequately explained why no one believes them. Nobody cares whether or not the delay was justifiable, because they could continue having justifiable delays for the next decade.
- nostrademons 1y agoUnless they're Elon Musk, apparently.
- recursive 1y agoI think most people also don't believe Elon about these kinds of promises either.
- kjksf 1y agoEven if true, I don't see this as significant. The current battle for electric batteries is cost, not energy density. LFP and sodium batteries are less dense that non-solid state lithium ion batteries but they are good enough to be used in standard version of Model 3 or Model Y and those are best selling ev cars. Energy density is good enough, durability is good enough, what matters is lowering the price. A battery with higher energy density but without lower price is not competitive. Toyota still doesn't have a high volume electric car. Lack of batteries is not the cause of that but Toyota's own decisions. Even if they get a slightly better battery, they still need to design a good ev car and that's way more to that than replacing gas tank and engine with a battery and motors. Furthermore, you don't just mass produce ev batteries. Panasonic was struggling and loosing money for several years making batteries for Tesla. When Tesla decided to make batteries themselves, it also took them years to go from 0 to a significant number of batteries. Idemitsu doesn't seem to make ev car batteries so I don't see how the could possibly have meaningful production in 2 years. Furthermore, going solid state is only an incremental improvement of a component of the battery. It has the most economic value when applied at scale. So it would make most sense to license this technology to existing high volume manufacturer like LG Chem or CATL. The realities of volume production vs. cost make it very unlikely you can just compete with CATL and LG Chem making 1/100 of their volume even if your battery is slightly better.
- jayd16 1y agoThis assumes a static market but higher energy density means more range and more use cases, right?
- rcxdude 1y agoATM the main limit on range is price as opposed to weight. You can make an EV with as much range as a gas car, it'll be heavy AF but the main thing that will limit sales is that it's expensive.
- jayd16 1y agoThe weight means diminishing returns, which makes it even more expensive. If you cut the weight, you do get a cost reduction.
- readthenotes1 1y agoYet another Better Battery Bulletin. Just a few more years this time just like last time