Toyota to unveil electric car with 10-min fast-charging solid-state battery next year

A new report suggests that Toyota is going to unveil an electric car with a new solid-state battery that enables 10-minute fast-charging capacity next year.

Toyota started working on solid-state batteries back in 2017 with plans to commercialize the batteries inside electric vehicles in the early 2020s.

Now, Nikkei Asia is out with a new report about Toyota’s plans to unveil a car powered by the next-generation battery as soon as next year:

“The technology is a potential cure-all for the drawbacks facing electric vehicles that run on conventional lithium-ion batteries, including the relatively short distance traveled on a single charge as well as charging times. Toyota plans to be the first company to sell an electric vehicle equipped with a solid-state battery in the early 2020s. The world’s largest automaker will unveil a prototype next year.”

The report claims that the new battery will enable 500 km (310 miles) of range and charging in just 10 minutes.

Toyota has yet to launch an all-electric vehicle outside of China.

Earlier this year, the Japanese automaker announced a new all-electric SUV that will be coming soon and said that’s it’s their “first step” for battery-electric cars.

Electrek’s Take

Recently, we have learned of advancements in solid-state technology, like the recent announcement from QuantumScape.

However, most companies delveoping solid-state batteries are talking about volume production during mid-2020s or even the second half of the decade.

If the report is accurate, Toyota would be ahead, but I would take it with a grain of salt for now.

We are still missing a lot of information about Toyota’s solid-state batteries, like the number of cycles it can achieve and capacity at different temperatures, which have been problems with solid-state batteries.

I am not saying that it’s impossible that Toyota has solved those, but I think we need more information, which sounds like could be coming with the unveiling of the first vehicle to get the new battery next year.

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