The word “breakthrough” is always a flag to me. It’s either a discovery of some potential that hasn’t been fully researched yet and once it is it’s found to not be as practical or cost effective, or it’s in development but something will happen that stalls or blocks it from getting into production (whether that be engineering, science, or intentional shelving for other reasons).
What I look for is some stats that are much better than existing,tested on existing prototypes with good results, and announced for the model due out the next year with an actual price tag.
The other frustration with following battery/energy technology is that even if a big ‘breakthroughs’ does work out as expected, it takes 5-10 years to go from the lab to market, and that’s on the optimistic side. During that development time, the energy demand consistently goes up every year, so by the time we actually get ‘better batteries’ we’re also using more energy, resulting in a net change of “not much”.
Toyota are already working on bringing a solid state battery to mass production. This article is about making the road to mass production easier. So this might actually happen pretty fast. If it’s for real, of course.
The word “breakthrough” is always a flag to me. It’s either a discovery of some potential that hasn’t been fully researched yet and once it is it’s found to not be as practical or cost effective, or it’s in development but something will happen that stalls or blocks it from getting into production (whether that be engineering, science, or intentional shelving for other reasons).
What I look for is some stats that are much better than existing,tested on existing prototypes with good results, and announced for the model due out the next year with an actual price tag.
The other frustration with following battery/energy technology is that even if a big ‘breakthroughs’ does work out as expected, it takes 5-10 years to go from the lab to market, and that’s on the optimistic side. During that development time, the energy demand consistently goes up every year, so by the time we actually get ‘better batteries’ we’re also using more energy, resulting in a net change of “not much”.
Toyota are already working on bringing a solid state battery to mass production. This article is about making the road to mass production easier. So this might actually happen pretty fast. If it’s for real, of course.