Japanese battery-makers want to regain their rightful place at the head of the pack. To do so they are betting on solid-state batteries. These still shuttle lithium ions between the anode and the cathode to charge and discharge, but the electrolyte where this shuttling happens is solid not liquid. That makes the batteries more stable and potentially more powerful. It also dispenses with the need for bulky cooling systems, required for fast-charging Li-ion systems.
Japan submits more battery-tech patents a year than any other country; second-ranked South Korea files half as many. Japanese firms and inventors accounted for more than one in two solid-state-related patents between 2014 and 2018. More are coming. Japan’s government is pouring money into research, including a centre headed by Mr Yoshino. Industrial and chemicals firms, of which Japan has plenty, are gearing up to make the materials needed to bring the technology to market.
Murata, a big manufacturer which bought Sony’s battery division in 2017, plans to begin mass-producing smaller solid-state batteries this autumn. Nakajima Norio, Murata’s boss, sees “lots of potential in wearables”, since the batteries do not burn or get hot . This month Toyota announced plans to invest $13.5bn by 2030 in next-generation car batteries, including the solid-state variety. Honda and Nissan, two other carmakers, are also eyeing the technology.
Naturally, if making solid-state batteries were easy, manufacturers would be churning them out. It isn’t. Water mucks up the materials, so factories must be kept ultra-dry. Mitsui Kinzoku, an engineering firm, has been testing mass production of solid electrolytes and found that it is “indeed a very difficult process”, in the words of Takahashi Tsukasa, who is involved in the project.
Even if they can get the technology right, Japanese firms are not running unopposed, as they had been in Li-ion’s early days. Most big carmakers, including Ford, Hyundai and Volkswagen, have solid-state cars in the works. They may want to make the batteries themselves. Volkswagen has a big stake in QuantumScape, an American solid-state-battery startup backed by Bill Gates.
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