How Toyota's 745-mile Solid-state Battery Stacks Up Against The Competition

11/01/2024

How Toyota’s 745-mile Solid-state Battery Stacks Up Against The Competition

If it’s not the most anticipated battery in the history of EVs, it should be. Toyota has been promising a solid-state EV battery that will bring a range-extending miracle to electric cars. If Toyota’s PR department (and the general buzz around solid-state batteries in general) is to be believed, all the beloved buzzwords of mediocre middle managers will be appropriate: “game-changing,” “paradigm-shifting,” “disruptive,” “transformative,” “pioneering,” “groundbreaking,” and the rest. Toyota’s battery design, though much-vaunted and rarely seen, could put the company in the lead of an EV market it has hitherto ignored (aside from the bZ4X SUV introduced in 2023).

But, Toyota isn’t the only other car company trying to get solid-state batteries onto the road. Solid-state batteries have drawn the interest and funding of various companies across the auto industry. Unfortunately, but unsurprisingly, specifications remain relatively rare across the industry, though there’s no shortage of factory renderings. Given what we know so far, how does Toyota’s battery compare to the solid-state competition?

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In order to give you the most up-to-date and accurate information possible, the data used to compile this article was sourced from various manufacturer websites and other authoritative sources, including Car and Driver, TopGear, and MotorTrend.

The Stunning Possibility Of A 745-mile Range

Toyota’s battery has one of the longest hypothetical ranges in the industry.
Nio’s battery comes close and has actually been road-tested.
Volkswagen Group’s battery has about half the range per charge, but did very well in longevity testing.

Toyota promises a range of 745 miles (about 1,200 km). That is longer than the typical range for an ICE car with a full tank. Long driving ranges might be called a bit of a signature for Toyota. After all, this is the company that introduced the world to hybrid cars. Obviously, Toyota didn’t invent hybrids. But, no other manufacturer had ever successfully sold them before.

In the decades since the first Prius left the first dealer lot, Toyota has since expanded its hybrids into a full lineup of trucks, SUVs, and cars. While the primary selling point of hybrids was initially “going green,” any owners who don’t particularly care about the environment still appreciate the way a tank of gasoline stretches farther. Similarly, future Toyota owners using the automaker’s 745-mile battery will easily appreciate how forgiving the battery would be when they forget to charge it (or have nowhere to plug it in).

Nio Has Actually Used Its Battery To Power A Road Trip

While Toyota’s promised range is perhaps one of the most stunning figures ever put into an official press release, other solid-state batteries have shown similarly long ranges. Towards the end of 2023, Chinese EV manufacturer Nio put a semi-solid state battery into a car and drove it for 648 miles without recharging it. At the end of this journey, the battery had three-percent of its charge left.

Of course, it’s inadvisable to let one’s car battery get that low when not performing promotional stunts. But some basic math shows that Nio owners who follow the sensible policy of always keeping the battery at 50-percent or higher could go 334 miles (537 km) between charges. Granted, 648 miles is not quite as impressive as Toyota’s purported 745 miles, but it’s impressive nonetheless.

Compared to Toyota, Nio has the substantial advantage of having actually road-tested its battery. If Toyota has made a long-distance trek with its SSB, it has done so without letting anyone know.

Volkswagen Has Tested Its Battery For Durability

Understandably, given the early stages of scientific development, verified solid-state range projections are still somewhat scarce across the auto industry. However, Volkswagen Group unintentionally gave an estimated range per charge when it announced the testing results of its SSB– even though it didn’t give the number outright.

The company claimed that after 1,000 drain-and-recharge cycles, its battery retained 95-percent of its charging capacity (an astonishing feat in its own right). The company also claimed that its 1,000-cycle test simulated 500,000 km of driving (approximately 310,000 miles). With a little basic math, Volkswagen’s own numbers suggest a driving range of 500 km (310-ish miles) per charge. That’s not as impressive as Toyota’s purported range, but it is a respectable range all the same.

Heres How Nios SSB Stacks Up Against Toyotas 745-mile Solid-state Battery

Toyota’s battery promises to be superior, but Nio already has them on the road – albeit with a catch.

Toyota’s Lack Of Development

Toyota has a long history of developing SSBs, but few actual results to show for it.
Nio’s battery has been tested on public roadways and not just on testing tracks.
Volkswagen has tested its SSB for durability, but the real-world results may not be as promising as the first tests suggest.

Before getting too carried away with glib predictions of electric Corollas that can go nearly 800 miles between charges, one must the biggest problem with Toyota’s solid-state battery. It barely exists. Toyota has been working on SSBs for at least a decade. The company has over a thousand joint patents with Panasonic, but has very little product to show for it.

Toyota recently entered into an SSB research and development partnership with Japanese petroleum company Idemitsu.

It’s tempting to speculate about what scientific wonders are cooking up in Toyota’s laboratories, but so far very little has been announced to the outside world. Toyota showed a single photograph of its SSB, and a vial of gray powder that was stated to be the solid-state electrolytes that will power the 745-mile battery of the future.

Nio Has Actually Gotten A (Semi) Solid-State EV Onto Public Roads

Toyota may not have gotten its battery out of the laboratory, but that doesn’t mean nobody else has.

Most notably, Chinese newcomer Nio took its battery out of a carefully managed proving ground and onto public highways. As aforementioned, the company’s CEO live-streamed a 648-mile drive without making any stops to recharge. (As a side note, it’s refreshing to see a CEO getting out of his office and personally proving his company’s products across hundreds of miles of highways.) While such a long drive is a stunning endurance feat for any EV, the real achievement here is that Nio took its car did this outside of a testing track and subjected it to the far less than optimal conditions of crowded public roadways.

Of course, Nio’s battery is not purely solid-state like Toyota’s. Instead, Nio has made a semi-solid state battery. So, while Nio’s cross-country road trip is a massive achievement in EV history, automotive pedants can still correctly point out that the company has not put the world’s first solid-state battery into a car. That footnote in automotive history remains open for anyone (including Toyota) to claim.

Volkswagen’s Test Results Are Impressive, But Limited

While Toyota still has the chance to be the first company in automotive history to get a purely solid-state battery onto the road, Volkswagen has already gotten its SSB out of development and into the testing phase. Volkswagen hasn’t released many specifics about how it tested its battery. Instead, the German automaker simply announced that it drained and recharged the battery 1,000 times to see how well it held up. As previously mentioned, the results were promising.

However, Volkswagen didn’t discuss how it tested the battery, or what conditions it subjected it to. There is no mention of whether the battery was put through extreme temperatures to simulate being left outside throughout the year, whether the laboratory scientists mounted it on some sort of vibrating platform or otherwise subjected it to the bumps and rattles of everyday driving, or anything like that. With that in mind, Volkswagen’s testing results are impressive, but they don’t necessarily reflect how well the battery will hold up when subjected to multiple traffic jams and a smattering of potholes every week.

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The Differences In Battery Chemistries

Toyota is using lithium sulfides in its production processes, which involve byproducts of petroleum refining.
Honda has developed internal protective layers that may extend battery life.
Nio has already gotten a long road trip using a semi-solid state battery.

So far, every battery company that has dabbled in solid-state EV power has been doing it with lithium, and Toyota is no exception. The company has zeroed in on using lithium sulfides in its manufacturing processes. This is a big driver behind Toyota’s recent partnership with petroleum refiner Idemitsu. Essentially, Toyota is using petroleum byproducts to produce batteries. And, who would have more petroleum byproducts than an oil refiner?

Honda May Have Ended The Battery-Killing Problem Of Dendrites

Honda hasn’t released many specifics about the internal chemistry of its batteries, but it recently announced a breakthrough that could end a long-standing problem for aging SSBs. Honda developed a way to put an internal protective layer between the electrodes and the electrolyte. In theory, this prevents the formation of gritty crystals called dendrites, which are one of the main causes of SSB death. The polymer barrier covers the electrode, which basically means that the battery has nowhere for any crystals to take root and grow. This theoretically means that dendrites cannot form inside the battery.

Nio’s Unparallelled Success With Semi-Solid State Batteries

Nio’s semi-solid state battery is (barring any roadtesting kept hidden from the outside world) the only such battery to go on public roads. This suggests that perhaps semi-solid state batteries may be a more natural fit for cars than fully-solid state ones. After all, no one has driven a solid-state EV yet, much less taken one on a 648-mile drive.

While any battery technology is more complex than a one-sentence explanation, semi-solid state batteries basically use a mixture of solid and liquid electrolytes rather than the all-liquid electrolytes found in conventional EV batteries. (Well, usually the electrolyte is more of a paste, which better resists destructive sloshing.)

Liquid electrolytes, whether a paste or otherwise, naturally make perfect contact (or close to it) with the battery’s electrodes. This means that the electrolyte can send out electricity as efficiently as possible. Getting solid matter to make such perfect contact with the electrodes has been one of the more fiendish problems when it comes to making car-sized SSBs. Semi-solid state batteries eliminate this problem entirely.

Here’s Honda’s Solution To The Biggest Solid-state Battery Problem

Honda may have solved one of the most common ways EV batteries wear out, thus proving to be a blessing for potential future EV owners.

Toyota’s Long, Slow Solid-State Progress

From a PR perspective, Toyota has yet to recover from its failure to appear at the Olympics. The company claimed that it would have a solid-state battery on display at the 2020 Tokyo games. However, when the Olympics finally occurred in 2021, Toyota was absent without comment. It’s worth noting that at this point, Toyota had been working on SSBs for at least ten years. The company’s absence prompted people to wonder if Toyota had actually accomplished anything after a decade of solid-state promises, and many remain skeptical to this day.

Why Toyota Might Be Wise To Take So Long

Toyota’s biggest asset is its reputation for indestructible cars. As the jokes often go, the only things to survive the apocalypse will be the cockroaches and somebody’s 1995 Corolla. And of course, while solid-state batteries are an old technology, they have never really been viable for anything bigger than a hearing aid or a pacemaker. Making an SSB large enough to power an EV is technologically unprecedented.

Other auto companies (especially the makers of supercars) can get away with putting semi-tested, bleeding-edge technology into production cars and using paying customers as testers. With the right PR spin, the most finicky and failure-prone powertrains can be rebranded as “part of the driving experience.” However, Toyota cannot afford to risk its reputation for reliability and has wisely chosen not to do so.

At present, very few other automakers get such respectful nods from car experts for such unapologetically boring vehicles. Toyota may not make the cars that skid through enthusiasts’ wildest dreams, but practically no one else’s cars last as long. A lost reputation is nearly impossible to get back. If it seems like Toyota is taking too long to come up with a solid-state battery, it may be because the company won’t let one go to any customers until it can guarantee that it will be as reliable as every other Toyota ever made.

The Uncertain Future Of SSBs

Solid-state batteries have attracted industry interest (and truckloads of industry money) for at least a decade. If the hype is to be believed, they will solve every known battery-related problem of EVs. They can allegedly take fast-charging without wearing out. They weigh far less than the lithium-ion batteries that currently power EVs.

However, no one – including Toyota – has managed to get one onto public roadways. Nio has come the closest with its semi-solid state batteries, but purely solid-state batteries remain an elusive goal that continues to hover in the amorphous near-ish future. It is entirely possible that solid-state batteries will either prove unviable to manufacture, or they may simply be too expensive to justify the MSRP. However, if solid-state batteries become yet another entry in the list of failed automotive technologies, it won’t be for lack of effort.