Toyota’s top battery expert said July 5 that the company would be able to simplify battery production processes, allowing the organization to decrease the size, cost and weight of electric vehicle batteries by up to 50%, according to the Financial Times.
Keiji Kaita, the president of Toyota’s research and development center for carbon neutrality, said that the organization had developed ways to make more durable batteries and believed that it could make a solid-state battery with a range of 745 miles that could charge in 10 minutes or less.
Prior to this announcement, Toyota had already been considering a plan to roll out a line of cars that utilize advanced solid-state batteries, which offer more benefits than liquid-based batteries, by 2025, according to The Guardian. However, the Japanese business said July 5 that it had figured out a way to simplify the production of materials used to make these batteries, allowing for decreased EV charging times and greater driving ranges.
Toyota thinks it will be able to produce solid-state batteries for electric vehicles as early as 2027, according to the Financial Times.
“For both our liquid and our solid-state batteries, we are aiming to drastically change the situation where current batteries are too big, heavy and expensive,” Kaita said. “In terms of potential, we will aim to halve all of these factors.”
According to The Guardian, Toyota said that it thinks it could eventually make solid-state batteries easier to produce than lithium-ion batteries, which would dramatically change the landscape of the global automotive industry, allowing the sector to potentially achieve its goal of Net Zero Emissions before the International Energy Agency’s target date of 2050.
Additionally, this advancement would lead to more EV adoption in the trucking and freight transportation industries, where smaller commercial trucks are currently struggling to meet domestic electric vehicle mandates.
