The notion that TMC is in some way 'against batteries in cars' has not been true since their foundation, when development of what they call their 'Sakichi' battery, able to practically and importantly economically power cars.

Since then they have poured in billions, and still are.

They are not fans though of developing only for the well off, and being overly reliant on subsidy.

Anyone any idea of how this might be accomplished?

' For the vehicle, Toyota aims to improve power consumption, which is an indicator of the amount of electricity used per kilometer, by 30%, starting with the Toyota bZ4X. '

That sounds ambitious, given the high efficiency of present electric drive trains.

The Toyota LQ Concept shown during the Olympics has printed on the side "All Solid State Battery". So they definitely have a real world ASSB auto being tested and that will be 30% more efficient and 30% less costly to build. We hope the production auto looks more like the BZ4x rather than the LQ, and what does 30% more efficient really mean? Maybe better than the Tesla Model 3 Standard Range Plus LFP which has 240 Wh/mile efficiency?
My guess is the battery is a Bipolar LFP battery with a Silicon/Carbon Anode (check Patent US20210249646A1 jointly held by Panasonic and Toyota). A 220 Wh/kg LFP battery in Bipolar configuration would give a Battery Pack Energy density of 200 Wh/kg (BTW Guoxuan, a Chinese battery cell maker already has an 212 Wh/kg LFP battery).
Panasonic and Belgium research company IMEC have been working on solid state electrolytes since 2017. Toyota already has in production a Bipolar NiMH battery for the Aqua hybrid. So all the tech should be production ready by 2023.
A $25k Toyota C-HR like BEV would be good competition for the upcoming $25k Tesla that is already in prototype and uses LFP batteries.

The Toyota solid state sulfur possibly is based on a Sulfur based solid electrolyte - LiTi2(PS4)3 or LTPS which was discovered by Belgium’s Université catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain) - references:
https://chargedevs.com/newswire/uclouvain-discovers-new-solid-state-material-with-high-lithium-diffusion-coefficient/
and
"Superionic diffusion through frustrated energy landscape",https://arxiv.org/pdf/1708.02997.pdf

IMEC role was in developing a production technique (https://www.imec-int.com/en/imec-magazine/imec-magazine-february-2020/battery-day-2020-shifting-gears-to-solid-state-battery-technology).

The current battery design is probably not a Lithium Metal battery or Anode free, which would be better however are still in development. The patent referenced is about Silicon Anodes. So the nearest term and lowest cost battery would have an LFP cathode. The Bipolar design makes the LFP almost as good as NMC batteries at significant cost reductions.

Some people on this site have more faith in Toyota than I have. The following is worth reading: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/25/climate/toyota-electric-hydrogen.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

Also $14.3 Billion is considerably less than GM and Ford are investing.

If you read the NY Times article you should also read some of the reader comments. Select the reader picks tab to order them. The top one read:

“Toyota was the largest corporate donor by far this year to Republicans in Congress who disputed the 2020 presidential election result.”

Seriously? You could have led with this. Was considering a Toyota for our next vehicle purchase this fall, no way now!

The rest of the top picks followed a similar theme. This is a corporation that deserves to fail.

Davemart,

I am sorry if the link to the NY Times was not free. I thought that there were a certain number of free stories per month but maybe the article is too old. I am a subscriber so I can not see that. The article is a bit long to copy in its entirety but here is the first 4 paragraphs which gives the jest of the article:

"The Toyota Prius hybrid was a milestone in the history of clean cars, attracting millions of buyers worldwide who could do their part for the environment while saving money on gasoline.

But in recent months, Toyota, one of the world’s largest automakers, has quietly become the industry’s strongest voice opposing an all-out transition to electric vehicles — which proponents say is critical to fighting climate change.

Last month, Chris Reynolds, a senior executive who oversees government affairs for the company, traveled to Washington for closed-door meetings with congressional staff members and outlined Toyota’s opposition to an aggressive transition to all-electric cars. He argued that gas-electric hybrids like the Prius and hydrogen-powered cars should play a bigger role, according to four people familiar with the talks.

Behind that position is a business quandary: Even as other automakers have embraced electric cars, Toyota bet its future on the development of hydrogen fuel cells — a costlier technology that has fallen far behind electric batteries — with greater use of hybrids in the near term. That means a rapid shift from gasoline to electric on the roads could be devastating for the company’s market share and bottom line."

Their basic problem is that they are behind in battery development. Most of the other large automotive companies gave up on fuel cells for light duty vehicles about 15 years ago. They made a bad bet and now they are trying to play catchup and lobbying the US and various state governments not to mandate zero emission vehicles by a certain date. If their lobbying efforts fail and, hopefully they will, Toyota will not have vehicles to sell in some of their larger markets.

Their other problem was that most of their plants are in the southern states where labor cost were lower so they were giving out donations to Republicans in Congress who disputed the 2020 presidential election result. After this made the news, they supposedly quit this practice as the majority of their customers were not in the group backing Trump and company and there were a lot of Toyota customers that made comments similar to one I posted. They should have been smart enough to know better. They should also have better corporate ethics.

Toyota donated more than $50,000 to Republicans who tried to block approval of the US President's win in some states
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-57773010

Bumbling politics aside, I agree with Toyota that:

' To the latter point, Maeda said that according to Toyota’s calculations, the CO2 reduction effect of three HEVs is almost equal to that of one BEV. Because Toyota can provide HEVs at a comparatively affordable price, in places where the use of renewable energy is to become widespread going forward, electrification using HEVs is among the effective ways of reducing CO2 emissions, he said.

More specifically, Toyota’s cumulative sales of HEVs have now reached as many as 18.1 million units.

Earlier, I mentioned that the CO2 emissions reduction effect of three HEVs is equivalent to the reduction effect of one BEV, and the 18.1 million HEVs sold to date are equivalent to the CO2 reduction effect of introducing to the market about 5.5 million BEVs.

The volume of batteries for HEVs that we have produced so far is the same as that of the batteries installed on about 260,000 BEVs.

In other words, we can say that the batteries needed for 260,000 BEVs have been used to achieve the CO2 emissions reduction effect of 5.5 million BEVs.
—Masahiko Maeda'

As although I fully support electrification, I do not support doing so by means of unlimited tax breaks and subsidies to the well off.

In much of Europe including the UK Tesla and other big battery BEVs are effectively free, courtesy of tax exemptions.

Every car could be a hybrid at a fraction of the cost, reducing total emissions far more.

I will welcome BEVs as they become more economic, not at any cost.

Just like Toyota, although without any contributions to Republicans! ;-)

@sd:

I agree that you can't get to zero using vehicles which emit.
But transport and light vehicles are far from the only source of emissions, and funds must be sensibly spent.
So far BEVs have been massively regressive, with huge tax breaks for the well off, on the premise that that will rapidly drive down battery costs so that they are for 'everyman'

We now have lots more detail on what Toyota have to say on batteries:

https://insideevs.com/news/531990/toyota-bz4x-battery-capacity-durability/

https://insideevs.com/news/531932/toyota-outlines-strategy-batteries-electrification/

https://global.toyota/pages/news/images/2021/09/battery/battery_01_en_2.pdf

Look at who Toyota are associated with for batteries, and it is a who's who of battery producers, including CATL (LFP and sodium) Panasonic (4680) and others.

Toyota reckon that we can only knock back costs by 30% in the next decade with all of them putting their heads together.

Solid state so far is looking more suitable for HEVs than BEVs.

Other efficiency and durability improvements are possible, as they detail, but this is a long, long way from affordable BEVs at the bottom end of the market.

My view is that the long range BEV for everyone, and the story justifying massive tax breaks and subsidies, is fraying.

Maybe ZEV can be reached economically with solid state batteries in a PHEV/FCEV combo,. or whatever, but there would seem to be little chance of a truly affordable long range BEV.

The chief concern with solid state that Toyota identify here is durability.

The recent advance by Monash in adding sugar to sulphur batteries may overcome this:

https://newenergyandfuel.com/http:/newenergyandfuel/com/2021/09/14/add-sugar-to-sulfur-to-beat-lithium-ion-batteries/

with Oxis now bankrupt and Toyota having hit battery, not cell level, production of solid state sulfur batteries they would appear to lead the race.

Since hassles making them in a dry environment are likely to make them expensive, at least at first, it is good that they have a ready made premium market for them in their association with Joby aviation.