Toyota Aims To Develop Advanced Electric Car Battery

"Lithium-ion battery is a key technology for electrifying cars, and there is a clear need, going forward, for improving this technology and its performance even more.”

By Sreejith

Published: Saturday, November 26, 2016, 15:37 [IST]

Japanese auto giant Toyota Motor Corp aims to develop a more advanced electric-car battery in a few years. This advanced battery will allow the automaker to build vehicles with up to 15 percent greater range and battery life.

Toyota Aims To Develop Advanced Electric Car Battery

Hisao Yamashige, a battery technology researcher at Toyota said, "Lithium-ion battery is a key technology for electrifying cars, and there is a clear need, going forward, for improving this technology and its performance even more."

Improving the technology of lithium-ion battery will be a good relief for many EV manufacturers such as Toyota and Tesla. The battery used in the current EVs have limited characteristics.

Toyota is Japan's biggest carmaker and now it has created gasoline-electric hybrid battery technology that is getting debuted in a few months. The new advanced batteries might be used in the plug-in hybrid Prius Prime.

The company is also aiming to release an all-electric car by 2020. Now, the Toyota engineers are working on the module of lithium ions. They were able to see in "real time" how lithium ions moved inside electrodes, Yamashige said.

Most of the lithium ion batteries that are used are facing problems such as overheating,etc. So, this new development will lead to new designs that prevent the lithium ions from moving unevenly and bunching up in the electrodes.