Japan will develop all solid state batteries

According to the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, the Japanese government will work with private companies to promote the development of a new generation of pure electric vehicle (EV) batteries. Starting in May, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry will cooperate with Toyota, Asahi Kasei, Matsushita and other automotive, materials, and electronic machinery companies to promote the development of high-efficiency all-solid batteries. At present, Japan is taking market share by Chinese companies in the mainstream automotive battery field. Focusing on the official popularity of pure electric vehicles, Japan will accelerate the development of a new generation of batteries to achieve counterattack.

The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry of Japan will invest 1.6 billion yen in the lithium battery Materials Evaluation and Research Center (LIBTEC), a technology research association attended by materials manufacturers such as Asahi Kasei and Toray. Major manufacturers such as Toyota, Nissan and Honda, as well as battery manufacturers such as Panasonic and GSYUASA, will also join the development of LIBTEC.

At present, the electrolyte of a mainstream lithium battery is a liquid, and the solid electrolyte uses a solid electrolyte. No need to worry about leaking, safety is improved, and assembly is easy. Since the parts required for all-solid batteries are reduced, not only can the cost be reduced, but also the output power can be increased.

In the field of all-solid batteries, Toyota's research is considered to be the most advanced in the world, but it has not yet been put into practical use. Therefore, companies from various industries, from automobiles to batteries to materials, will build a cooperation framework to accelerate research and development, the use of solid materials that are more difficult to use in batteries than liquids will be used to advance the development of performance and to establish safety evaluation standards.

The average cruising range of a car equipped with an existing lithium battery is about 400 kilometers. LIBTEC strives to increase its cruising range to 550 km by 2025 and to 800 km by 2030. All solid batteries are expected to be adopted by many companies.

In the automotive battery industry, Japanese companies are at the forefront, accounting for 70% of the market in 2013. However, Chinese and Korean companies are catching up fast. In 2013, Chinese companies with a market share of only 3% expanded to 26% in 2016, while Japanese companies fell to 41%.

Under the influence of global environmental protection restrictions, pure electric vehicles will officially become popular in the future. China plans to increase the number of new-generation vehicles from 650,000 in 2016 to 80 million, and Germany plans to increase it from 70,000 to 6 million. Japan plans to increase the proportion of new-generation vehicles in new car sales to 20~30% by 2030. It is expected that the market size of core parts and components for pure electric vehicles will also increase significantly.

In order to grasp the global automotive battery dominance, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry will promote the development of international standards. Specifically, the discussion is submitted to the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) and the like.

Japan will speed up its response from both technical development and standards development, and enhance the presence of Japanese companies in the pure electric vehicle market.

The page contains the contents of the machine translation.