Toyota announces 2025 as the year it will release vehicles with solid-state batteries.
The automaker intends to incorporate solid-state batteries into a hybrid vehicle instead of a fully electric one.
"We want to start by putting them in vehicles where we believe that they're both the most well-suited in terms of lifetime but also that will exercise them sufficiently so that as costs continue to come down, we can roll them out in the future in [battery-electric vehicles] also," Gill Pratt, Toyota's chief scientist and head of the Toyota Research Institute, said, according to Car and Driver.
Solid-state batteries hold the promise of offering quicker charges and longer drive ranges.
Hybrids allow for a smaller battery pack that's less cost-sensitive, Pratt noted. He also suggested that the increased amount of cycling for the batteries makes hybrid vehicles a good test bed for the new technology.
Although Toyota has not confirmed which model will be released using solid-state technology, some experts suspect it will be the Prius.
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