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Toyota is a company that has quite a few things to regret in the electric vehicle world. Despite being one of the early pioneers of EVs it failed to build on the success of its iconic plug-in hybrid, the Prius. However, Toyota is now serious about EVs, and it wants to compete with its solid state battery.
Is solid state battery what Toyota needs to compete with Tesla and return to its former glory as the king of EVs?
Join us as we explore the exploits made by both Toyota and Tesla in their battery technologies.
Toyota is an excellent company with lots of assets, resources, and capital in the automotive industry. It is the largest vehicle maker globally and controls two of the best-known brands, Toyota and Lexus.
It is also the second most valuable car company, behind, well, Tesla.
The Japanese automaker got a lead in electric cars with its hybrid electric vehicle, the Prius, which helped sell more than fifteen million hybrids.
However, Toyota is in the unenviable position of looking into the electric vehicle market from the outside. This current position was due to a series of missteps by the company leadership over the years.
Toyota’s top brass was influenced by its CEO, Akio Toyoda, who would probably like to erase from the records his statements about electric vehicles, which he claimed were overhyped. His thinking was that since electric vehicles were still charged with power coming from plants that produced carbon emissions, electric vehicles weren’t the environment saviors they are claimed to be.
Due to this flawed thinking, Toyota spent years chasing after hybrids, where it recorded some success, and hydrogen fuels. This was at the expense of progress on purely electric vehicles.
It must be painful for the leadership team to see Tesla being the poster boy of electric vehicles, but it seems Toyota is making moves to course correct. Like the mass producer it is, Toyota has turned on the fire-hose of alternatively fueled vehicles, promising more than 70 new models by 2025.
Depending on how Toyota counts, 15 of the new models will be purely electric. Toyota has selected the brand name ‘BZ,’ which means Beyond Zero, for its upcoming electric line. It has revealed the first vehicle in the line, the BZ4X, at the Shanghai Auto Show. It is tentatively set for release in its home country, Japan and China, this year and the rest of the world in 2022.
Toyota will base the BZ line of vehicles on the e-TNGA EV platform, which is built in collaboration with Subaru.
However, Toyota needs more than just an EV platform to compete in the electric vehicle world.
Toyota is literally behind Tesla in everything in electric vehicles. Tesla has built a strong EV brand that is known all over the world. It has accrued deep knowledge of EV manufacturing processes, has invested in factories and other facilities that are tailor-made for producing electric vehicles, going as far as installing Gigapresses in several countries.
Tesla is competing with extras like Autopilot, Full Self Driving, where Toyota is not a top player. Tesla is also at the forefront of battery technology.
Toyota needs something to compete with if it is to catch up with Tesla. For this, Toyota is banking on two things: its new solid state battery, which we hear will feature in an electric vehicle this year, perhaps the BZ4X, and attempting to slow down the progress of electric cars through legislation, a prime example of Amazon’s and Blue Origin’s tactics.
Just what do solid state batteries bring to the table for Toyota? And can it beat Tesla’s own new tabless 4680 battery?
Solid state batteries are supposed to be safer because they do not use traditional electrolyte batteries. This reduces fire risk in theory as the electrolyte is solid, which renders them no risk of exothermic reaction during charging, which causes thermal runaway.
Is this such a breakthrough in batteries? That is debatable, considering that Elon Musk always points out that the risk of EV fires is simply overhyped as they rarely occur, compared to fires from internal combustion engine vehicles.
Mind you, Tesla has been innovating to mitigate heat in its tabless batteries. Because of the design, the 4680 battery has improved thermal characteristics, with electrons facing less resistance as they move to the cathode.
Another advantage of solid state batteries for Toyota is charging speeds. They are supposed to supply up to 80 percent charge in just fifteen minutes. Is that so hot? Considering that Tesla Superchargers can do the same in about half an hour already, and the tabless battery is promising considerable gains in charging times, Toyota will have to rethink its supposed advantage.
Not necessary rethink. 15 minutes compared to 30 minutes is huge. Especially when you say that they store more energy.
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