Let's establish a timeline...and include links. Let's do this, so you can understand why this is...I'm gonna call it stupid. You want to pretend that this is news...just as NASA does...but I'm calling it a plea for more capital funding.
1987. Solid state batteries exist...and aren't viable because of the associated costs.
Declassified document
1990. Commercial lithium ion construction is viable thanks to Sony. Not solid state, but does provide commercial lithium chemistry.
2008. Tesla demonstrates traditional wet cell chemistry can be used to power EVs. It demonstrates that you can have a practical EV powered by current energy density storage.
2010. Toyota announces and demonstrates a lab cell for a solid state battery.
Toyota
2011. Practical solid state battery chemistry demonstrated in lab with technical paper.
2011. French company demonstrates practical use of solid state battery in a car.
Company site
2014. Toyota claims a 2020 release in production vehicles for those wonderful solid state batteries.
2014
2017. Toyota revises promise for those batteries to "early 2020's."
2017
2019. Blue solutions. I'm going to call this the actual release for their cells in functionally non-commercial uses. Their road map is 2026 at earliest to have a solid state battery equivalent to current wet chemistry lithium cells. Please note in 2011 they were all gung-ho on a single demonstration...and in 2024 they aren't yet as good as lithium-ion chemistry.
2021. Toyota is now claiming 2025.
2023. Toyota revises again. This time 2027-2028. Hmmm....about 5 years in the future. I see a pattern.
2023
2024. NASA claims that they've cracked the barrier to beating lithium ion. No word on cost, or production plans. They do claim 500 Wh/kg...or about twice that of a Tesla lithium ion cell (whether used in energy grid storage or for an EV).
Cool. I detect another feel good article. Another promise of technology that is a few years out...but can be demonstrated without scale and without cost consideration in a lab. Great...
I hope you understand this now...but I'm assuming you still have a sacred cow being beaten here. It's funny when you actually stack the timeline up, and see that the evolution of the solid state battery is literally in the same place it was 37 years ago. Let me define that. It's potentially some of the best technology...as demonstrated by laboratory samples...with no commercially viable usage (read that original paper...'cause it's spelled out there) . It's another half decade out...perpetually. There are laboratory developments all of the time...yet it's never something you can go out and buy. Let me draw a parallel for you, with blue LEDs.
History of the Blue LED - youtube video Note that the reason blue LEDs succeeded was that they managed to make a commercially viable process (earlier attempts failed because laboratory experiments didn't equate to a viable manufacturing process)...and that this was from Bloomberg so there is not conservative bias.
Let me share a little secret with you. I hate Elon Musk, because he's an idiot who failed upward. Despite that, the greatest thing he ever did was to take tax payer money and build the factory that mass manufactures lithium ion battery cells. Yes, they are a recycling issue, and they are a huge environmentally impactful item. That said, they did drive down the cost of cells. It sounds silly to say this, but without someone like him we'd probably still be bound to much more expensive batteries. The thing here is he took a good process and made it commercial. Solid state has Ford, Toyota, Panasonic, and a litany of other companies spending billions to try and make solid state batteries commercial...and after more than a decade they've got both jack and squat, with a 5 year timeline that is perpetually five years out. Maybe it's time to suggest that all of this news is garbage meant to drum up more investment capital, to try and research some way to make this commercial, instead of a real and genuine good thing. If you cannot, with the above outline, see how this conclusion is objectively correct then you lack objectivity.
This is the same sorrow as Beta cassettes, the rotary engine, SLC memory cells, and a litany of other technologies that are great on paper but aren't practical. Note that 5 years ago on youtube they demonstrated how awesome solid state batteries are...and they're still that awesome today, if they were commercially viable.
Cutting a battery Note that the comments are also very quick to point out that it's not viable due to a silly low energy density, the size is an issue, they've been hearing about this for a decade already, and my favorite point is that the company that made these is still not offering a commercial product...they only do B2B sales based on their website
Prieto