Nissan used to be the leader in electric vehicles, but now it’s not. Instead of just matching its rivals, it wants to do better by being one of the first to make solid-state batteries that store a lot of energy. Even stranger, it thinks it can do it faster than Toyota, which is a big supporter of battery technology. Nissan announced on Monday while giving a tour of its battery factory in Yokohama. At this site, Nissan plans to try a production line for solid-state batteries. The company wants to have the batteries on the market by the end of the fiscal year 2028. Reuters says that Nissan plans to start making test batteries in March 2025. By April 2028, the company wants to make 100 megawatt-hours of solid-state batteries every month. Toyota, which was one of the first companies to use solid-state batteries in cars, has a longer and more ambitious plan than this. Toyota has been testing cars for years, but as usual, Toyota’s plans for putting them on the market are still standard. Toyota plans to wait until at least the fiscal year 2027, while Nissan wants to start pilot production in just one year. Toyota has also been vague about how much it plans to make in total, only saying that by 2030, it will be able to make enough batteries for about 10,000 electric cars. Nissan, on the other hand, thinks it will be able to produce 1.2 gigawatt-hours of electricity every year in four years. The amount of EVs that can be given out depends on the type of car. For example, 12,000 Tesla Model S or 20,000 Leaf Plus models with bigger batteries would be enough. Nissan would be ahead of Toyota in either case if it pulls off the surprise. It is hard to make solid-state batteries stable and useful in real life, so they have yet to be sold to the public. Often, news stories talk about supposedly better technologies, but working, low-cost solid-state batteries still need to be found. Being the first company to meet these goals would be good for Nissan, and Honda also wants to work with Nissan on EVs. In the past, Nissan tried to work with General Motors but failed, so its big promises could affect the future of more than one of Japan’s top three automakers. Let’s check to see if it makes them better.
