Toyota has reportedly developed a new type of battery that is lighter, smaller and can be charged quicker than the current batteries used in electric cars.
Modern electric cars used a type of battery called lithium-ion. It’s a technology found in literally every type of gadget imaginable from smartphones to Teslas.
It does however have some drawbacks when applied to a car: It’s heavy, takes up a lot of space and cannot be charged at the pace that many would like without potentially damaging it.
Solid state batteries on the other hand use solid electrodes and solid electrolytes and while they’re harder to mass-produce they’re better in almost every way.
According to Forbes, Toyota plans to release a commercialised version of the battery as soon as 2020 however it won’t reveal which car it’s actually going to appear on.
While solid state batteries certainly aren’t a new technological innovation, Toyota would be the first company to actually find a way to turn them into a usable car battery.
The technology would be lighter, as well as smaller resulting in quicker electric cars with a significant boost in range too.
If that wasn’t enough the technology would reportedly allow fast charging potentially opening up the possibility of charging your electric car in just minutes.
Toyota’s announcement rather conveniently coincides with a recent report by the Dutch bank ING which claimed that by 2020 electric cars would have a similar range to that of its petrol counterparts.
The news of a smaller, lighter battery couldn’t have come at a better time after the government confirmed that it would be banning the sales of petrol and diesel cars by 2040.
For those worried about the idea of diesel and petrol cars being banned ING’s report has more good news. Most notably of which was that it believes by the 2020s electric cars will already be considered the ‘rational’ choice for consumers.