Toyota will launch solid-state battery cars in 2025, but the first launch is not a pure electric model

As one of the earliest car companies to study solid-state batteries, it is no secret that Toyota will launch a mass-produced version of solid-state batteries in 2025. However, at the recent CES 2022, Gill Pratt, chief scientist of Toyota and director of the Toyota Research Institute, reiterated that the first Toyota car equipped with a solid-state battery will not use pure electric drive, it will still be equipped with an internal combustion engine. He also said that the development is proceeding as planned, and the first Toyota car with solid-state battery technology will arrive in the first half of this century, that is, around 2025.

Jill Pratt, director of the Toyota Research Institute

As for why Toyota prioritizes the use of the technology on hybrid vehicles rather than pure electric vehicles, Pratt said that it is because the current demand for battery capacity in electric vehicles is significantly higher than that of hybrid vehicles, because the current solid-state battery is very expensive, and the cost of pure electric vehicles is much higher than that of hybrid models. While the associated costs may fall by 2025, they are still not enough to bring costs under control.

For this reason, Toyota will first apply the technology to hybrid models because they have smaller batteries, so they won't have much of an impact on the cost of the car because of the batteries. The company also sees hybrids as a testbed for solid-state batteries, which, according to Pratt, can bring tougher tests to solid-state batteries because hybrid batteries are charged and discharged more frequently. Once no problems are found after testing and the cost drops low enough, these batteries will eventually be installed on pure electric vehicles.