Toyota's NEW Solid State Battery (Fluoride) | 600+ mile range!

Toyota has been one of the quietest legacy automakers when it comes to battery electric vehicles. Once a pioneer when it came to hybrid technology, they're still pretty good at that. But the Japanese automaker is seemingly behind when it comes to developing fully battery electric vehicles, or are they? Just only about two weeks ago, I covered Toyota's solid state lithium ion battery development with Panasonic. Although it was promising, that technology seems to be at least five years out from today. Speaking of today, we will be diving into a different battery technology of theirs, the fluoride ion solid state battery that is in development with Kyoto University, and if successful, how it could very well change the world as we know it. Welcome back to Luxurious Fleet, my name is Kirk, and this channel is dedicated to Japanese autos. Subscribe, hit the bell icon so you won't miss any of my breaking news on vehicles from the land of the rising sun. Heading over to Nikkei, Kyoto University and Toyota test 1,000 km per range EV battery. So they're saying making solid progress, which is a pun, right, because it's solid state, get it? But with this potential, they can cram far more energy into a small lightweight package than today's standard lithium ion batteries. The fluoride ion battery would hold about seven times as much energy per unit of weight as conventional lithium ion batteries and could allow vehicles to run 1,000 km on a single charge. But a quick time out, we already have some cars that can go up to five, 600 km, but they're saying the density is seven times as much. So it should be a lot higher than 1,000 km in an ideal situation. So fluoride is the anion, which is the negatively charged ion of fluorine. A fluoride ion battery or FIB generates electricity by shuffling fluoride ions from one electrode to the other through a fluoride ion conducting electrolyte. It's pretty much how all batteries work, just this is a different element. Hey guys, don't forget to smash the like button. That will help me out immensely with the YouTube algorithm. And that definitely lets me know you're excited about solid state battery technologies and how they can change the world as we know. So the anode is composed of fluorine, copper and cobalt, and the cathode is mainly of lanthanum. Again, they quote the theoretical energy density with a range up to seven times longer than today's lithium ion batteries. If we look at 500, what's 500 times seven, that's 3,500 km. That just doesn't seem realistic, but anything is possible, guys, anything's possible. One key advantage other than the density is that solid state batteries, they are not flammable, so they don't have to over-engineer and create systems to prevent overheating. So apparently the biggest challenge up to now, FIBs work only at high temperatures, but that causes the electrodes to expand. But apparently Kyoto University in Toyota has figured out a way to keep the electrodes from swelling by making them from an alloy of cobalt, nickel and copper. Nickel and copper are easy enough to get for the most part, but cobalt is a little bit more of a rare earth metal, and that's what a lot of these battery manufacturers like CATL and Tesla's work with CATL, Toyota's working with CATL, I think Honda just jumped on board as well, but they have LFP batteries, which take cobalt out of the situation. It should be an easier and cheaper to produce battery without the cobalt, but the problem is the energy density isn't quite as high. But if the theoretical energy density with this is seven times higher than lithium ion with a little bit of cobalt, that's not going to be an issue. Of course, they're still tweaking the materials used in the anode to ensure the battery can be charged and discharged without losing capacity. Now here's something that's also hopeful, in 2018 Honda, together with the research from we'll just say Caltech, and NASA, reached an important milestone with FIB, the ability to operate power cells at room temperature rather than heating up to high temperatures. Well, that's still at room temperature, that doesn't include temperatures like here in the Midwest, it's cold as hell, freezing temperatures below zero, yeah, that'll be interesting to see how they, maybe they have to have a warmer on the battery pack, which a lot of these EV companies already put a warmer on those battery packs to optimize the efficiency of them. Not only do they have a higher density and they're not flammable, they can last up to eight times longer than batteries in use today. That's a million mile battery right there guys, at least, if not more. A lot of other people are also testing magnesium and aluminum, which is a genius idea, and the reason is, is that those elements are more readily available on earth than other ones. Lithium is kind of down the list a little bit, fluorine I believe is 13th in abundance for the elements here on the earth, I'll put it in the Wikipedia page in there for you, but magnesium is even more abundant, and then aluminum is like top five in terms of abundance here on earth, so that would make sense for them to be able to make batteries from aluminum, that would be incredible, and hopefully that's the future, hopefully I get to see that in my lifetime, that would be amazing. And the importance of this, whoever develops the best performing rechargeable batteries will become the global leader in this vital piece of technology, because the battery market is extremely lucrative, 56 billion dollars in just three years it will be worth, so these advances will result not only in better EVs, but allow them to serve as a ubiquitous form of storage for electricity generated from renewable sources such as solar power, helping to power society with clean energy, everyone plugs their car in at night, all these renewable sources of energy, let's say wind, solar, etc. are feeding the grid, right, well if that power is not being used at night it just goes to waste, but if these cars are plugged in with their massive batteries, or at least their super high energy density batteries, then that energy will then go to supplying the household, maybe during the day if the car is there, but yeah, just taking the load off the grid because that extra power has somewhere to go. And also from a natural gas and coal power plants, they would be able to have their excess energy into these battery cars as well. And this will allow them a new society without making massive infrastructure investments And that is coming from Akira Yoshino, who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2019, so he knows what he's talking about when it comes to batteries. Now just a couple of weeks ago when I was talking about Toyota and their solid state lithium ion battery technology, that's still on track, they're saying it could be as soon as 2023 of April, instead of the 2025 in that automotive news article that I talked about. Don't really know which one to trust, I'm going to take the more conservative ones, say 2025 they'll have solid state lithium ion batteries, but if they can make solid state fluorine ion batteries before then, that has better range, etc. I think they're going to go that route instead, so they're not putting all their eggs into one basket. They had to remind us that a prototype lithium ion battery was developed in 1985, but the batteries did not come commercially viable until 1991. Well Toyota's had prototypes of several different battery technologies for at least three or four years now, so here we are in 2020 and we still don't have anything quite close, but hopefully 2023 we'll have that lithium ion solid state battery and not long after that the fluorine ion battery. Now it depends on the cost of these solid state batteries, but if they're super expensive when they come out, I could see Toyota just putting them in a plug-in hybrid system, super dense, really small footprint, and then they could have a plug-in hybrid with 50-100 miles of range with a small battery. But I think a lot of people at that point are probably just going to want a fully electric vehicle because the maintenance is lower, better power, etc. It all depends how fast this battery technology progresses, that is going to determine how aggressive Toyota gets with their electric vehicles. They really don't have anything right now because they don't want to have to compromise the range, the charging, the cost is a big one as well. Them spending a lot of money on these battery packs, they're not to where they want, want them to be for profitability. Tesla struggles with profitability, they are a massively great company to invest in with their stocks and everything, but they're still struggling to make money while Toyota is all about the margins, all about making that dough, and battery electric vehicles in their current state won't allow them to do that. That's why they've been a little hush on everything, but they are investing billions of dollars into battery technology, so they're not sleeping like a lot of these people think they are, they are going to be, I'm never going to say they're going to lead in battery technology and battery electric vehicles, but they're going to be at the top, they're always going to be a force to be reckoned with, and yeah, just don't count them out. This is Toyota we're talking about, the most, arguably the most profitable automaker in the world. I know Ferrari is very profitable with their margins, but Toyota is a massive, 10 million, 10 million, is it 10 million cars a year, yeah, it's just crazy how many cars they make. So now speaking of hybrids, no Prius for Germany, Toyota plans to stop selling the standard Prius in Germany and possibly other markets as well, the company has so many Toyota and Lexus models that use a basic Prius hybrid system that the need for a standalone brand no longer exists, of course Prius sales in Germany have plummeted lately, which has to be a factor, yeah, Germany is going really hard, really fast in EVs from Volkswagen, we know Porsche is there, Renault is doing well there, Tesla is actually sliding, but they're still selling a ton of EVs there in Germany, so it'll be interesting to see what Toyota does with the Prius family, because it's dead, it's really dead, I think the Prius Prime is a great idea, I really like that car, but it can't really hold a candle to a full electric vehicle, the torque, the power, and people want a more electrified lineup from Toyota, and that's got to be in a range called the Prius, just like Hyundai just came out with Ioniq, just like Ford came out with the Bronco line, they need to have a specialized lineup, like I hope they come out with a Land Cruiser lineup to combat the Bronco lineup, but they also need to come out with an electrified lineup to combat the Ioniqs and Volkswagen's ID lineup, so you have a Prius, or you could just call it the Prius Highlander, or the Prius 4Runner, whatever you wanted to do, if Prius denotes fully electrification, which I hope they come out with that, if they don't, they're missing the Prius heritage, I mean the Prius is such a recognizable name around the world, it's been around for like 20 years plus, so people want the Prius, or they're familiar with the Prius, it'd be a great way for them to brand their new fully electric lineup, I just hope they do it, if not, it's an opportunity miss. Speaking of fully electric lineup, Lexus files LBX trademark in Europe, and it is possible that it could be an electrified version of the TNGA-B platform of the Yaris Cross, and I'm head over heels with the Yaris Cross, we're never going to get it here in America, but it is stunning, super efficient little vehicle, all-wheel drive, has arguably the best looks of the entire Toyota crossover lineup, and Lexus enthusiasts kind of speculates on what it could be, some people thought it was the next replacement for their infotainment technology, replacement for Inform, that's not what it's going to be called, initially I thought, oh you know, maybe it's a modification for the LX, maybe a longer wheelbase LX, but that's not going to be the case, because this is for Europe, the LX is barely in most parts of Europe, and it was also filed the same day in Israel, and it has not been filed in the United States, so I think this is going to be a very very small crossover B-segment, it could be full electric, it's definitely going to be hybridized, it will be interesting to see if they keep that one and a half liter inline three hybrid setup from the Yaris Cross, it'd be nice if it was a plug-in hybrid, and just a couple days ago I posted a video on the Lexus RZ 350e, fully electric, this trademark doesn't have any numbers or letters after the LBX, it's just Lexus LBX, so it's more likely a vehicle, but it could still be something else entirely, so let me know what you guys think of what LBX could be, and let's talk about this last article here, which Toyota and Mazda are going deep with this commitment into the manufacturing plant in Alabama, and man is it freaking huge, that's a cool little roundabout there though, so they're $800 million to increase the state-of-the-art technologies and training programs to incorporate more cutting-edge manufacturing technologies to its production lines, and provide enhanced training to its workforce of up to 4,000 employees, there has to be some sort of electric specific or very cutting-edge hybrid specific manufacturing pieces of technology and hardware being put into this plant because of that, so it will be interesting to see. They have now invested a total of $2.311 billion dollars up from the $1.6 billion originally announced, so it accommodates production line enhancements made to supporting the Mazda vehicle, and design changes yet to be announced for the yet-to-be-announced Toyota SUV that will be both produced at the plant. So we do know for sure now it's going to be a Mazda crossover vehicle with up to 150,000 units per year, and then 150,000 units of Toyota's crossover vehicle, that's what they just said SUV right here, so what we don't know is if they're actually going to be the same vehicle. It could very well be just a different badging. We're expecting the Corolla Cross to make it stateside and possibly replace the C-HR because that vehicle just doesn't do well here, doesn't have all-wheel drive, doesn't have a hybrid setup to it. I think my kids just tore down the baby gate, they want to get up here. It'll be interesting to see what Mazda comes up with for their vehicle. I'm expecting the Corolla Cross for Toyota at this plant. Mazda, I don't really know what they're going to do. They have the CX-30, they have the CX-5, it could be the CX-50 with the recent video came out with what looks like they're going to be replacing the CX-5 with the CX-50, so maybe they're going to create a CX-50 there. I don't know, I'll see you guys down in the comments on that one, and like always guys, thank you so much for watching, you guys are amazing, thank you for being a part of the luxurious fleet. Feel free to check out my Teespring store where I have awesome merch like this coffee mug, and I promise the coffee tastes 10 times better. It almost tastes like a little bit of Mount Fuji going down your throat. I'll catch you guys in the next video, and until next time, take care of yourselves, love you guys, peace out.