10 minutes of charging, 1200 kilometers of range: Toyota solid-state battery, to overtake in a corner?

Recently, Toyota announced an agreement with Japanese energy giant Idemitsu Kosan to cooperate in the mass production of all-solid-state batteries.

According to the plan, Toyota's solid-state battery with a 10-minute charge and a range of 1,200 kilometers will be fully mass-produced in 2027.

Toyota's solid-state battery, is it reliable?

Today, we'll talk about this topic.

At present, the mainstream battery technology on the market is lithium-ion batteries.

Solid-state batteries, in fact, are also a kind of lithium-ion batteries.

However, compared to traditional lithium-ion batteries, solid-state batteries use a solid electrolyte to replace the original liquid or gel-like electrolyte and separator.

Schematic diagram of lithium-ion and solid-state batteries

This difference also gives solid-state batteries the advantages of higher safety, higher energy density and shorter charging time.

As early as 2010, Toyota launched a solid-state battery prototype with a cruising range of more than 1,000 kilometers, and announced plans to achieve small-scale mass production of solid-state batteries by 2025 and stable mass production by 2030.

In June this year, Toyota announced that it would launch pure electric vehicles equipped with "all-solid-state batteries" to the market as early as 2027.

Toyota has now entered into a mass production alliance with Idemitsu Kosan.

Toyota and Idemitsu Kosan have reached a mass production alliance

From the timeline, Toyota's solid-state battery mass production plan is landing step by step.

It's not that simple, though.

There are two issues to consider:

First, can it be mass-produced?

As introduced above, solid-state batteries are so good, why haven't they been marketed?

This is because the technical difficulty of solid-state batteries is very large, which discourages many companies.

Toyota claims to have more than 1,000 patents in the field of all-solid-state batteries, and launched a prototype in 2010.

However, Toyota did not come up with specific data and evidence, nor did it publicly display their solid-state battery products or test results.

Toyota's power battery plan

Technology can achieve breakthroughs from 0 to 1, but the industrialization of technology is often from 1 to 100, step by step.

Toyota is an automotive giant, but it is not deep in the field of power batteries.

Suddenly there is a big news, which is somewhat suspicious.

In this regard, Wu Kai, chief scientist of CATL, commented:

All-solid-state batteries, there are still some core problems to be solved, if Toyota says that the energy is now producing all-solid-state batteries, I doubt it, but by 2027, I can't predict, with the technical level of the Ningde era, it is also very difficult.

CATL is the global power battery leader, and Wu Kai is an industry leader.

His evaluation also represents the attitude of the industry to some extent.

Second, is it competitive?

After the industrialization of technology, it must also be tested by the market.

The key is whether it is competitive compared to other products.

From this point of view, the power battery is not the shorter the charging time, the better, the longer the battery life, the better, but a comprehensive comparison.

Japanese professional institutions estimate that the manufacturing cost of all-solid-state batteries (sulfides) is 60,000-350,000 yen per kWh, which is 4-25 times higher than existing lithium-ion batteries (14,000 yen).

If the cost is high, the terminal price will not have an advantage, and consumers will not pay, so it will be difficult to promote.

In September last year, Sunwoda released SFC480 super fast charging battery technology, which can achieve a range of 200km in 5 minutes of charging and 400km in 10 minutes of charging.

In August this year, CATL released a self-developed lithium iron phosphate 4C supercharged battery, with a comprehensive range of 700km and a pure electric battery life of 400km in 10 minutes.

CATL lithium iron phosphate 4C supercharged battery

Compared with Toyota's solid-state batteries, CATL's lithium iron phosphate 4C supercharged battery is developed based on a mature technology platform, which has the ability to mass produce and the cost is relatively low.

The power batteries launched by Chinese companies are also iteratively upgraded, and Toyota's solid-state batteries are not so easy to win the market.

Overall, even Toyota's successful mass production of solid-state batteries does not have much impact on Chinese companies.

The confidence lies in the fact that China has the most sound power battery industry chain.

Once solid-state batteries are proven to be mass-produced, Chinese companies can quickly follow up and reduce costs by virtue of industrial chain and scale advantages, thereby gaining competitive advantage.

The Zhengjie Bureau has also written before to introduce that there is a "dispute between electric energy and hydrogen energy" in new energy vehicles.

China and the United States promote electric energy, and Japan dominates hydrogen energy.

Toyota has long been skeptical and conservative about pure electric vehicles, and in addition to putting more energy into hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, it is also sticking to hybrid vehicles.

In 2020, Akio Toyoda attacked pure electric vehicles for being overhyped at the annual meeting of the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association, criticizing pure electric vehicles for not being environmentally friendly at all and emitting no less carbon dioxide than hybrid vehicles.

Now, Toyota is in a hurry to mass-produce its own solid-state batteries, and there is a trend of turning to electric vehicles.

In a sense, this is a collective victory for China's electric vehicle companies.