Every industry has a technology that stays permanently three years away. In cars, it is the solid-state battery.
I have read versions of the same press release, in different corporate fonts, since roughly 2017. Longer range. Faster charging. None of the flammable liquid sloshing around under your floor. Always arriving just past the horizon of whatever product cycle the executive happened to be defending that quarter.
Nobody calls it out, because the physics is real. Swap the liquid electrolyte for a solid one and you get a denser, safer cell in the laboratory. Keeping that cell alive through a Michigan winter, a pothole on Interstate 94 and 1,000 charge cycles in a customer’s driveway is the part that keeps slipping.
So the calendar became the product. Toyota (TM) has owned 2027 to 2028. Samsung SDI has owned 2027. Detroit has owned a research budget and a shrug.
BYD (BYDDY) just moved the meeting up.
The Chinese automaker plans to have a vehicle running its solid-state battery technology on the road next year, Executive Vice President Stella Li said in an interview with Carwow.es in Valencia, Spain, according to CarNewsChina.
BYD is “in the leading position for the commercial line, and for the technology,” Li said. She added that the company would field one model carrying the technology next year to prove it.
What BYD actually promised on solid-state batteries
Read the promise closely and it shrinks. Li gave no production date, no vehicle name, no battery specifications and no performance figures, which leaves the announcement at the technology-demonstration stage, reported CarNewsChina.
When I lined that wording up against BYD’s own engineering roadmap, the gap was the story. FinDreams, BYD’s battery arm, has reported 20 amp-hour and 60 amp-hour solid-state prototype cells approaching 400 watt-hours per kilogram, though cell numbers do not translate into pack numbers.
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The chemistry is sulfide-based, and sulfides are difficult neighbors. They conduct ions beautifully and react badly to moisture, generating hydrogen sulfide gas, which forces sealed manufacturing environments and dry electrode processing all the way through the line.
There is a mechanical problem too. Solid-to-solid interfaces can lose contact as electrodes swell and shrink through a charge cycle, so some designs need sustained pressure clamped across the stack, and a car adds vibration, heat swings and potholes to that requirement.
Why the solid-state timeline still favors nobody
Here is the part that should reassure Detroit and Nagoya more than the headline suggests. A demonstration vehicle tests integration, not economics, and the specialized sulfide precursors involved currently cost dozens of times more than conventional liquid-electrolyte materials, reported CarNewsChina.
Toyota is not standing still either. Its partner Idemitsu Kosan has begun construction on a large-scale pilot plant for solid electrolytes that is expected to be finished by the end of 2027, reported Electrek.
The industry’s real scoreboard is a set of dates, and they cluster tighter than the rhetoric implies.
- BYD will have one model using solid-state technology next year, according to Li’s remarks reported by CarNewsChina.
- Small-batch trials of roughly 1,000 vehicles arrive around 2027, with large-scale commercial production near 2030, according to FinDreams Chief Technology Officer Sun Huajun, Electrek reported.
- Toyota will “ensure market launch of BEVs with all-solid-state batteries in 2027-28,” the automaker said in a statement.
- Samsung SDI is targeting all-solid-state mass production in 2027, reported CarNewsChina.
- Liquid lithium-ion and all-solid-state systems could coexist for 15 to 20 years, said BYD Chief Scientist Lian Yubo, highlighted in CnEVPost’s report.
That last line is the one nobody puts in a keynote. BYD’s own chief scientist is telling you the battery in the car you buy in 2028 will almost certainly still be liquid.
What Detroit is doing about battery supply
General Motors (GM) spent last week talking about a different problem entirely. The company is early in developing next-generation cells meant to cut American dependence on Chinese materials, and expects commercial production of sodium-ion cells around 2029.
GM is building the chain so that “when we get into market, we’ve got a domestic source for that,” battery and sustainability vice president Kurt Kelty told CNBC.
Ford (F) has taken the same unglamorous path, moving its Marshall, Michigan plant into production-intent lithium iron phosphate cells for a midsize electric pickup due in 2027, reported GM Authority, citing the Detroit News.
More Automotive:
- Audi isn’t fighting China with a bigger car
- Musk just turned the Cybercab into a gaming console
- VW’s CEO just survived the fight that sank his predecessors
Neither is a solid-state answer. Both are a cost answer, and cost is what has actually been killing American electric vehicle demand.
That is the quiet trade Detroit has made. It ceded the headline technology and went after the sticker price, which is defensible strategy right up to the moment a rival proves the headline technology works.
What the solid-state race means for your next car
My analysis of BYD’s sales math suggests the company can afford a science project in a way its rivals cannot. BYD sold 2,227,722 new energy vehicles from January through July, down 10.54% year over year, while overseas sales reached 969,208 units, or 43.5% of the total, reported CnEVPost.
Cumulative new energy vehicle sales have now passed 17.3 million units, the company said.
That is the uncomfortable part for Toyota and Detroit. Solid-state cells will debut on expensive halo cars, likely BYD’s Yangwang and flagship Denza models, where the cost is easiest to bury, according to CarNewsChina.
Halo cars are how a company buys engineering data at retail prices. BYD has enough volume elsewhere to fund the lesson, and Chinese state support helps, because the company develops this technology inside a government-backed platform tied to an estimated $830 million research program.
For anyone shopping, the practical takeaway runs against the marketing. Waiting for solid-state before buying an electric vehicle means waiting past 2030 for anything you can actually afford.
Resale anxiety deserves the same treatment. If liquid and solid cells genuinely share the road for 15 to 20 years, a 2027 model will not be stranded by a 2029 press conference.
The thing worth watching instead is charging speed on the cars already for sale, since second-generation lithium iron phosphate packs are closing much of the gap that solid-state was supposed to fix, and they are shipping now.
For portfolios, the near-term money still sits with the companies scaling cheap liquid-electrolyte cells rather than the ones promising to replace them.
Next year’s vehicle is a test bench with license plates. Watch what BYD refuses to say about it, because the specification sheet, or its absence, will tell you whether 2030 is a target or a hope.
Related: BYD sends blunt message to Tesla with 35.4% of exports
