The competition within the electric sector of the automotive industry is being a real spectacle, and it seems that all companies want to lead this incredible revolution, but they always face the same problem: battery autonomy. Although we saw that the Chinese industry is trying to make its own place in the global market… Toyota does not want to be left behind. And researchers at the Toyota Research Institute (TRI) are working to find a battery that has a useful life of up to 70% longer, which would mean that we would not have to change them so often or spend thousands of dollars researching other types of clean energy.
It seems impossible, right? Well, it is not! The electric future is about to change, but how does this TRI discovery work? The secret is in the first charge, but we will tell you below.
What about the first charge?
You probably remember when you bought your first mobile phone that the instructions said that the first charge had to last approximately 12 hours. This is the well-known “training” charge that was also carried out with car batteries because they are made of the same material: lithium. This charge is carried out very slowly and at low power, and, although tedious, it was crucial for the battery’s performance to last longer.
But Toyota wanted to change the rules and they discovered that if this slow first cycle is accelerated and replaced by a fast, high-power one, the battery’s durability increases much more.
And they don’t say this just because, but because they have tested 62 variations of charging protocols and have discovered that a faster and more powerful first cycle prolongs our batteries by up to 70% more!
Will there be an impact on the industry?
Of course, the impact of a discovery like this will put the rest of the competitors who want to be on a par with Toyota against the ropes.
In addition, by extending the life of the batteries, the extraction of lithium, cobalt and nickel (which are the essential materials for manufacturing batteries) would be reduced and this is the only drawback of this resource that is called “clean” (although it is not a clean resource because mining generates environmental pressure and a lot of pollution…). But all that is about to change, if this discovery is developed and marketed, it could even make the prices of electric vehicles cheaper!!
Will we see this technology on the market?
We can’t rush everywhere, Toyota is still in the research phase with these batteries, by Steven Torrisi (one of the people in charge of TRI) the manufacture of these batteries requires a large investment of capital, energy and time and before starting mass production they will have to continue testing and adjusting the manufacturing lines, but we can take for granted that any innovation that is made in electric mobility to convince the most sceptical! The future is yet to come, and everything points to it having a wire!