Toyota Announces Mass Production Of Solid-State Batteries

Phase one will see the two companies come together to create better sulfide solid electrolytes. Solid-state batteries offer many benefits over the ones we currently have today, thanks to the solid electrolytes that allow for faster ion movement. They charge faster, weigh less, and offer better range than anything currently on the market. They're pivotal to Toyota's plan of offering a600-mile range and 10-minute charging EVby 2027, but there is one major drawback.

Repeated charging and discharging can lead to cracks between cathodes, anodes, and solid electrolytes, thereby ruining the battery. The two companies had been working on a solution well before they established this partnership and have apparently created a crack-resistant solid electrolyte with high performance. The product still needs fine-tuning and brought up to scale, which leads us to phase two.

Phase two will see Idemitsu create a large pilot facility to start the mass production of the technology while Toyota promotes it and ensures the market launch of its BEVs with the technology by 2027-2028.

Part of the hurdle the two need to overcome is the fact the technology is rather revolutionary. Idemitsu has been developing lithium sulfide technologies as an intermediate material for solid electrolytes for years. It discovered it as a byproduct of its main business, petroleum refining, and thus still needs to invent ways to get it up to full-scale mass production. It will then be up to Toyota to realize the two companies' vision of solid-stateTacomasand Camrys as far as the eye can see.

The goal of the two groups isn't just to create the best BEVs, but to establish the technology as a global standard, much in the same way Tesla has succeeded at doingwith the NACS charging connector.

Phase three is then the most vague of the three phases, and merely consists of the two companies studying the technology moving forward for advancement and expanded full-scale mass production.

While the tech is still years away, it could reshape the EV revolution entirely and is the big break the EV industry has been waiting for.