Toyota promises 1,000 kilometers of autonomy with its future fluoride-ion battery

The Japanese automotive firm has begun working with the most prestigious scientists from Kyoto University with a single objective: to drastically increase the autonomy of electric vehicles. up to a thousand kilometers traveled with a single charge.

Toyota is confident of achieving this goal thanks to the New fluoride ion batteries being developed, capable of storing up to seven times more energy per unit of weight than current lithium-ion batteries.

These batteries also have the added advantage of not needing a material such as lithium, quite flammable and even explosive in contact with air or water, which makes them much safer.

The team developing this new battery technology already has, according to some Japanese media, a first prototype. This integrates a solid electrolyte with a fluorine, copper and cobalt anode, while the cathode is mainly made of lanthanum.

The autonomy of fluoride-ion batteries could definitively put combustion engine vehicles out of the game

The huge increase in the energy density of this type of battery would represent a great leap forward on the road to the total electrification of the automotive sector. However, it remains to be seen whether the results obtained with this prototype will be comparable. can finally be transferred to series production.

Toyota is not, however, the only company or institution currently working on this new battery technology. The Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and the Helmholtz Institute in Ulm are also developing such battery cells. However, neither of them has managed to achieve the results necessary to bring these projects to the production phase outside the laboratory.

Toyota will still have to overcome some barriers along the way

The big problem they all face is that fluoride ion batteries They only work properly when they are at high temperaturesThe electrolyte must be heated enough to make it conductive, which in turn expands the electrodes.

To solve this problem, Toyota will use a new alloy of cobalt, nickel and copper, which still needs to be optimized to ensure that continuous charging and discharging of the battery does not cause excessive degradation.

This whole process will still require a few years, according to experts, who believe that we will not see mass-produced electric vehicles with this type of battery. until at least 2030. So, everything seems to indicate that your next electric car will still have the classic lithium-ion battery that we all already know.