Toyota's solid-state battery announcement has taken the auto world by storm, and here's how one more made it a force to reckon with.
With The 745-mile Solid-state Battery, Toyota Just Became A Force To Reckon With::Toyota has been criticized for not being the most proactive manufacturer out there, but with this new solid-state battery, it just changed the game.
the first vehicles with this battery are expected to be hybrids instead of all-electric vehicles. Toyota claims it will be ready for sale in 2027 or 2028.
This tells me we probably need to wait until 2030+ for this supposed 745mile battery.
745 mile range on the battery and they’d make it a hybrid? What a waste!
Need a more complicated drivetrain, a transmission, an engine block, and a fuel tank. All of that added weight and complexity when you have a 745 mile range without it?
It'll be a much smaller solid state battery in a hybrid, they wouldn't put enough batteries in it to hit 745 miles. I assume they would use at most 10% of the cells a 745mile vehicle would need and it could be under 5% of the cells needed.
If they can mass produce solid state ev batteries, that IS an absolute game changer, because their EVs will have a lifespan many times longer than that of any wet-cell EV.
I drove 2 hybrids until I got an EV. Will never go back. Concerns about EVs melt away once you've driven one. Charging is less of a hassle than you think.
Perhaps we’ve gotten too accustomed to the tech-bro approach to corporate PR, in which companies loudly trumpet every half-baked idea that may or may not fizzle into anticlimactic failure. Today, a company waiting until a concept is totally finished and ready for deployment seems almost quaint.
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Toyota is the first company that has come out and said it may have solved the range and battery weight problems.
Unfortunately they've been pushing the release date of this battery forward for the last two three years or so. I believe they have some core technology but haven't been able to overcome some critical issues.
CATL and BYD have already shipped the Sodium Ion batteries that cost nearly a third of LiPho and half that of Li-ion at similar densities, you can buy cells and cars in China already.
They also both have cells and cars out next year with a 2x density Li-ion, it's already been showcased so we know it exists but it's not on sale yet. By the time Toyota ships these Chinese companies will have been in market with a comparable product for many years. Sodium ion will do great for existing range and replace LiPho for power storage and the new Li-ion will be used in high range cars and probably replace all Li-ion in everything where density is preferable to price.
As far as I know they are equivalent density to LiPho, I don't know how they do it but it should allow similar range to existing current Li-ion batteries.
Not a lot of lithium is recycled nowadays. Added to this is the fact lithium is stuffed into all sorts of disposable junk tech that will likely never even be considered for recycling.