Researchers from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have developed a new lithium metal battery that can be charged and discharged at least 6,000 times — more than any other pouch battery cell — and can be recharged in a matter of minutes.
I would love to see more dramatic research into battery tech, but steps like this are also welcome, as these are necessary stepping stones before even better steps.
Toyota’s announced they’ll be using solid state batteries in their production EVs before the end of the decade.
Toyota’s been promising that solid state batteries are just around the corner for about 13 years now. They keep bumping the goalposts back every few years.
The first solid state battery was demonstrated in a lab in 1986, the first potentially viable chemistry was demonstrated in a lab in 2011, and Toyota began sinking money into it 2012. They have now spent 13.6 Billion on developing and trying by to scale up solid state batteries over the last twelve years, and are hoping to have a first release in 2027, sixteen years after the initial chemistry was first developed.