Toyota will launch electric cars with solid-state batteries in 2022 – bang on track

According to the Japanese media, Toyota is on-track to deliver the solid state batteries in electric cars by 2022, increasing range and reducing charge time.

Toyota has been a bit late to the battery electric vehicle (BEV), preferring top focus on hybrids, which has definitely worked, and on fuel cell hydrogen cars – which haven’t yet.

But despite apparent antipathy to EVs, Toyota was hedging its bets by waiting for battery technology to be good enough to take away range anxiety, and deliver charging times you could actually live with in the real world.

So despite the world thinking Toyota weren’t interested in EVs, they were busy beavering away on the batter technology.

Six years ago we reported that Toyota was working with the Tokyo Institute of Technology and the High Energy Accelerator Research Organization to develop a new solid-state battery with a 600 mile range, which would be quick to charge and cheap to build.

Few stood up and noticed that report, but there was more interest when we reported last year that the research team had succeeded in creating lithium-based crystalline ‘Superionic’ materials as solid state electrodes to deliver the batteries Toyota promised.

That coincided with Toyota setting up a team to develop a new range of electric cars, and now we learn from the Japanese press, via Reuters, that the new cars – and their new solid state batteries – will be ready for the market by 2022.

Which is bang on Toyota’s target for EVs we reported on in 2011.