When it comes to electric cars, people always think that they are the products of the past twenty or thirty years. In fact, it has existed for more than 100 years, and it appeared earlier than the fuel car. As early as the middle of19th century, electric vehicles using lead-acid batteries appeared. At present, it is difficult to find any industry that broke out as fast as electric vehicles before 100, but gradually declined. ?

Although electric vehicles have a history of a hundred years, before 2 1 century, due to the limitation of battery technology and scientific and technological level, electric vehicles never caused a big wave. Until the beginning of 2 1 century, battery technology made a breakthrough, and countries began to apply electric vehicles on a large scale. At this stage, the battery density is improved, the endurance level of electric vehicles is improved rapidly, and the dynamic performance of motors is not weaker than that of some low-displacement fuel vehicles. ?

After several years of development, pure electric vehicles have gradually shown the trend of branding and scale. These are the main factors that influence people to buy cars. At present, there are not a few brands that develop and produce pure electric vehicles. Almost all car brands want to be linked to new energy, and even Porsche has launched its own pure electric supercar. ?

Although the cruising range of many pure electric vehicles can reach more than 500km, at present, people's fast-paced lifestyle and the limitation of battery and charging technology have always been the biggest headache for electric vehicle owners. Therefore, developing new batteries has become the ultimate goal of major car companies in the next stage. To what extent the battery technology advances, the new energy revolution will advance, which is the first driving force of the new energy revolution in the future. ?

At present, the cruising range of fuel vehicles is mostly around 600km. To reach this standard, the energy density of the existing battery system should be increased by one and a half times, from the general 160wh/kg to 400wh/kg, which is the beginning for electric vehicles to completely replace fuel vehicles. This indicator means that the battery life is 600km, 80 kWh and the total weight is about 200kg. Now this weight is about 450-550kg. ?

But at present, the mainstream automobile batteries, whether lithium iron phosphate batteries or ternary lithium ion batteries, are all lithium ion batteries with liquid electrolyte, and the theoretical maximum energy density is 350wh/kg. If all kinds of battery management systems are added, the whole system can reach 300wh/kg, which is basically the limit. ?

Therefore, to solve the energy density problem of batteries and eliminate mileage anxiety, the ultimate solution must be solid-state batteries.

Solid-state battery is a battery technology. Different from commonly used lithium-ion batteries and lithium-ion polymer batteries, solid-state batteries are batteries using solid electrodes and solid electrolytes. Because the scientific community believes that lithium-ion batteries have reached the limit, in recent years, solid-state batteries have been considered as batteries that can inherit the status of lithium-ion batteries. Solid-state lithium battery technology uses a glass compound composed of lithium and sodium as a conductive substance, which replaces the electrolyte of previous lithium batteries and greatly improves the energy density of lithium batteries. ?

Toyota seems to have taken the lead in the race to produce solid-state battery electric vehicles. A few days ago, according to the Nikkei news, the Japanese auto giant plans to make its debut on 202 1. Toyota is in the leading position in the number of patents for solid-state batteries, with more than 1000 patents related to this technology. ?

Recently, Toyota demonstrated its achievements in solid-state battery technology, and plans to launch the original model equipped with solid-state battery in 20021year.

Toyota prototype was originally planned to be shown to the public during the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games, but it was postponed to 202 1 due to the epidemic situation. According to the test data, Toyota's solid-state battery prototype is much better than lithium-ion battery in charging speed. It takes only 15 minutes from zero to full, and the battery life reaches 500 kilometers.

It is estimated that the cruising range of mass-produced solid-state battery cars can reach 1000 km and the charging time is 10 minute. The aging degree of solid-state batteries is low. Toyota's goal is to keep 90% of the battery performance within the service life of 30 years, so that solid-state battery vehicles have very good endurance performance throughout the life cycle.

Presumably, many people have questions, why not mass-produce such a good battery?

Mainly because there are still bottlenecks in the production of solid-state batteries. The key of solid-state battery is solid-state electrolyte material, which leads to solid state at this stage? The main reason why the battery is difficult to develop is that there is no breakthrough in electrolyte materials. The existing inorganic solid electrolyte and polymer electrolyte materials do not have high ionic conductivity, mechanical strength and good processability.

In order to help speed up the development of this technology, the Japanese government is considering using part of the newly established 2 trillion yen (US$ 65.438+09.2 billion) decarbonization fund to build solid-state battery production infrastructure in China. Mitsui products, gasoline company Idemitsu? Industrial enterprises such as Kosan and Sumitomo Chemical are preparing to produce solid electrolytes. Volkswagen said that it will produce its own solid-state batteries by 2025, and Nissan expects to produce solid-state battery prototypes by 2028.

Domestic car companies have also made great progress in the field of solid-state batteries. As early as 20 17, BAIC New Energy took the lead in launching the research on solid-state batteries and vehicle matching technology, established cooperative partnerships with many domestic and foreign solid-state battery companies, carried out technical exchanges, made clear the development direction, identified the difficulties in the research and development of solid-state batteries, and finally achieved the off-line debugging of the whole vehicle, from concept to sample, from laboratory to trial production line, and from bench test.

Recently, Beiqi Blue Valley said on the interactive platform that the company's solid-state battery research and development project has made certain progress and is carrying out vehicle-related tests.

However, the prototype can only be regarded as a test car at best, but not as a production car, which means that all solid-state battery cars are still in the test and development stage. According to the current research and development progress of various brands of solid-state batteries, even if Toyota is used in production vehicles at the earliest, it is expected to be 10 years later at the earliest. As for whether other battery technologies will overtake in the next 10 year, we still don't know what the future path of solid-state batteries will be.

This article comes from car home, the author of the car manufacturer, and does not represent car home's position.