The automaker has 1,331 patents related to solid-state batteries
The company with the second-most similar patents is Panasonic
Toyota says it will sell a vehicle equipped with solid-state batteries in 2025
With its first and only mass-market electric vehicle having been introduced only this year, Toyota is fairly late on the EV market, but that doesn’t mean the company has been left behind by its competitors.
Indeed, a recent study found that Toyota is the world’s leader in terms of patents relating to solid-state batteries, a technology many believe will be a key part of the electrification of the automotive industry.
According to this study, Toyota has been working on this type of battery since the 1990s and it has now amassed 1,331 patents that relate to this technology.
For comparison, the company that owns the most patents in this area after Toyota is Panasonic, and it only has 445 of them.
This means that Toyota has a distinct advantage over its competitors both because it has decades’ worth of additional experience on the subject and because some of its patents might limit other companies in the ways they can build their own solid-state batteries.
This is also how Toyota is able to sell a hybrid vehicle equipped with solid-state batteries as soon as 2025 when most other automakers are expected to introduce their first models powered by this technology in 2028 at the earliest.
Toyota chose a hybrid model for its first use of the new batteries due to the more intensive charging and discharging cycles inherent to this type of powertrain.
The main benefits of solid-state batteries are their lower sensibility to temperatures and their increased fire safety over the conventional lithium-ion type currently used by most electric vehicles.
