With a ten-minute charge and a range of 1,200 kilometers, Toyota officially announced that it is cooperating with a Japanese energy giant to mass-produce all-solid-state batteries.

Toyota announced an agreement with Japanese energy giant Idemitsu Kosan to cooperate in the mass production of all-solid-state batteries, and build a supply chain. It is said that the two parties plan to commercialize the next generation battery in 2027-2028, and then achieve full mass production. Currently, they have jointly formed a research and development team of dozens of people.

According to official information, Japan's Idemitsu Kosan Co., Ltd. (Idemitsu Kosan) was founded in 1940 and started by selling lubricant products. It is now Japan's second largest oil company and one of the world's major OLED material suppliers. In addition, the company has been developing solid sulfide electrolytes.

In June this year, Toyota said it would launch a pure electric vehicle (EV) equipped with an "all-solid-state battery" on the market as early as 2027, supporting ultra-fast charging and ultra-long battery life.It can travel 1,200 kilometers in 10 minutes of charging.

Different from the current mainstream liquid lithium batteries, the electrolyte of all-solid-state batteries is pure solid, which has the characteristics of short charging time and long cruising range. However, its electrolyte and solid electrode must be close together and cannot be separated. Charging and discharging will cause the electrode to expand and shrink repeatedly, which will cause the electrolyte and electrode to separate over time. Therefore, previous solid-state batteries can generally only be charged and discharged dozens to hundreds of times, and cannot reach the thousands of times required for practical use.

However, at the technical briefing, Toyota stated that it had overcome the durability issue of all-solid-state batteries. Toyota CTO (Chief Technology Officer) Vice President Hiroki Nakajima said: "Great material has been found. We will not lag behind the times and will definitely be put into practical use.".

Toyota is a leader in the research and development of all-solid-state batteries, with more than 1,000 related patents. As early as the summer of 2020, the world's first vehicle equipped with all-solid-state batteries received a license plate and underwent driving tests. Toyota will further advance development and plans to extend the cruising range to approximately 1,500 kilometers in the future with charging time also being less than 10 minutes.

However, the current manufacturing cost of solid-state batteries is relatively high. Japanese professional organizations estimate that the manufacturing cost of all-solid-state batteries (sulfide type) is 60,000 to 350,000 yen per kilowatt hour.4 to 25 times more expensive than existing lithium-ion batteries (14,000 yen), how to reduce production and manufacturing costs is also a major obstacle to the promotion of this kind of battery.

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