Toyota Motor aims to develop advanced electric-car battery

Toyota Motor stated it intends to make a more advanced electric-car battery “in a few years” that will permit the Japanese car manufacturer to build automobiles with up to 15 percent higher range and battery life than they have presently.

“Lithium-ion battery is an essential technology for electrifying vehicles, and there is a clear need, going forward, for enhancing this technology and its performance much more,” Hisao Yamashige, a battery innovation scientist at Toyota, informed a media rundown in Tokyo.

Improving the performance of lithium-ion battery innovation is a pressing problem for standard automakers such as Toyota and brand-new entrants such as Tesla Motors Inc due to its limiting qualities.

Manufacturers of all-electric battery automobiles, plug-in electric hybrids, in addition to conventional gas-electric hybrids are all aiming to source or develop more advanced battery innovations to enhance range, battery life and safety.

Toyota, Japan’s biggest car manufacturer by volume, has pioneered gasoline-electric hybrid technology and is preparing to release a brand-new, near-all-electric plug-in hybrid called the Prius Prime. It is likewise aiming to come up with an all-electric battery vehicle by about 2020.

Utilizing methods developed in partnership with a Japanese publicly-financed lab and four universities in Japan, Toyota engineers were able to better see in “real time” how lithium ions moved within electrodes, Yamashige stated.

This ought to result in new designs that prevent lithium ions from moving unevenly and bunching up in the electrodes, something that presently limits battery life and vehicle range and can be a factor in triggering overheating, he stated.