Toyota to produce longer-lasting batteries for electric cars

Electric cars have limited range, which depends on the capacity of their batteries. To further improve the performance of their hybrid and (soon-to-be) all-electric cars, Toyota Motor Corp. decided that it’s time to develop a more advanced car battery.

How? In a report by Reuters, Hisao Yamashige, a battery technology researcher at Toyota, said that the Japanese marque teams up with a publicly-financed laboratory and 4 universities in Japan. Their engineers came up with ways to be able to see how lithium ions in the electrodes move in real time.

This way, the engineers will be able to come up with new designs to prevent the ions from moving unevenly and bunching up in the electrodes, as these flaws limit battery life, vehicle range, and cause overheating.

Lithium-ion battery is a key technology for electrifying cars, and there is a clear need, going forward, for improving this technology and its performance even more,” he added.

Toyota, the pioneer of gasoline-electric hybrid technology, has launched a near-all-electric plug-in hybrid, called the Prius Prime, during the 2016 New York International Auto Show. However, this is about to change as they are looking to release an all-electric car by the year 2020.

Source: Reuters