Five years ago, Takeshi Uchiyamada was not yet chairman of Toyota, and I was still at Thetruthaboutcars. I went to a Toyota event in Tokyo, where Uchiyamada-san mentioned the possibility of a breakthrough solid-state battery. He had a small specimen of the battery, and it even powered a vehicle – a skateboard. I was told then it could take a decade before the solid-state battery powers a car, because that’s how long battery breakthroughs take to travel the distance from research lab to road. Half of the decade is past, and that timing still holds. In another five years, and if a report in a Japanese newspaper is to be believed, Toyota will have the key technology for wide-spread  adoption of battery-electric vehicles: Solid-state batteries with twice the range of today’s EVs, while charging only in minutes.

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