A new prototype production facility launches in Japan, as Nissan seeks to start pilot production in 2024.
- Nissan opens prototype production facility for solid-state batteries at the automaker’s Research Center in Kanagawa Prefecture.
- The automaker plans to launch a pilot production line for solid-state batteries in 2024, with planned start of mass production in 2028.
- Several EV makers are developing solid-state batteries and are backing start-ups working on their own compositions, in an effort to move away from lithium-ion batteries in coming years.
Nissan has revealed a prototype production facility for solid-state EV batteries, with the automaker among several seek to bring batteries of this type to market this decade. Nissan and others have high hopes for battery designs and compositions that could finally reduce the industry’s reliance on lithium and other materials that are becoming more expensive to obtain.
Located within the Nissan Research Center in Kanagawa Prefecture, the prototype production facility is one of the first milestones in a process that will see the automaker launch a pilot production line for solid-state batteries in 2024, ahead of the hoped start of series production in 2028. By that year, Nissan hopes the cost of producing solid-state batteries will fall to $75 per kWh, and further down to $65 per kWh afterwards, which the company says will place them on par with gas-engined vehicles.
As other automakers and battery developers, Nissan is pursuing solid-state batteries because their energy density is about twice that of lithium-ion batteries used in modern EVs, as well as better charge/discharge performance, in addition to shorter charging times. Solid-state batteries also promise to be less expensive to manufacture, as Nissan points out, though at the moment this advantage is also one of the sticking points for their commercialization: It’s one thing to produce solid-state electrolytes in a lab setting and observe those quicker charging times, and quite another to mass produce them and install them in EVs.
Nissan plans to begin pilot production in 2024, ahead of mass production four years later.
Nissan
“Nissan has been a leader in electrification technology through a wide range of R&D activities, from molecular-level battery material research to the development of safe, high-performance EVs,” said Kunio Nakaguro, executive vice president in charge of R&D. “Our initiatives even include city development using EVs as storage batteries.”
The opening of a prototype production facility by Nissan follows heavy investment by a number of automakers, including Mercedes-Benz and Stellantis, in start-ups working on solid-state batteries, with the hope that one or two of them could offer a winning battery formula that could be mass produced with relative ease. But automakers themselves are also working on battery development in a race to patent and mass produce certain battery compositions, as the EV industry heads toward a long-predicted lithium crunch.
Just days ago, Tesla CEO Elon Musk indicated the automaker could seek to enter the mining industry to secure more raw-material supplies, due to “insane” lithium prices.
The pursuit of solid-state technology offers a way out, while also enabling the EV industry to grow without being constrained by the annual volumes of lithium that are mined at the moment—a constraint that effectively caps the number of EVs are produced each year. This is one of the main reasons the race to solid-state batteries has taken on a new urgency among automakers.
“The knowledge gained from our experience supports the development of all-solid-state batteries and we’ve accumulated important elemental technologies,” Nakaguro added. “Going forward, our R&D and manufacturing divisions will continue to work together to utilize this prototype production facility and accelerate the practical application of all-solid-state batteries.”
Keyword: Nissan Gets Ready for Solid-State EV Batteries