Nissan's new 'game changer' solid-state EV battery plant takes shape

YOKOHAMA, Japan – Nissan Motor Corp.. showed off construction of a pilot plant for all-solid-state batteries with executives calling the technology a “game changer” for its next-generation electric vehicles.

The building is little more than a maze of unfinished walls and dangling air ducts in an old, repurposed machining plant at Nissan’s sprawling Yokohama factory complex.

But by next March, Japan’s No. 3 automaker says, manufacturing equipment will be installed and turning out trial runs of the breakthrough next-generation batteries.

Initial volumes will be limited to tens of thousands of cells, enough to power only a handful of prototype vehicles, executives said during an April 16 tour of the facility.

But the pilot run will gradually scale up to about 100 megawatts per year, or enough for about 1,000 to 2,000 EVs, depending on the battery size, said Executive Vice President Hideyuki Sakamoto, Nissan’s global manufacturing chief.

After mass production begins in the fiscal year ending March 31, 2029, volume could reach 3 to 30 gigawatts a year.

Nissan will test the batteries in prototype EVs on public roads in the fiscal year ending March 31, 2027, and then deploy them in a production EV in the fiscal year ending March 31, 2029.

“The all-solid-state battery we are working on will be a game changer for the penetration of EVs,” said Shunichi Inamijima, corporate vice president for powertrain and EV engineering.

Nissan has said it plans to plow about $1.2 billion into developing solid-state batteries.

Nissan’s goal

The breakthrough battery pilot is a potent symbol of Japan’s transition from internal combustion to the modern age of electrification.

Automakers from Toyota to Honda are reconfiguring their domestic operations to meet demand for electrification.

Nissan, Toyota and Honda are banking on solid-state batteries to regain an edge in the global EV race, after falling behind such international rivals as Tesla and China’s BYD.

CEO Makoto Uchida unveiled a new midterm business plan on March 25 that envisions getting 40 percent of Nissan’s global sales from full EVs in the fiscal year ending March 31, 2031.

That is up from 9 percent in the fiscal year ending March 31, 2024.

A new family of next-generation modular EVs debuting after April 2027 will be key. By the end of the decade, Nissan thinks its EVs can achieve cost parity with gasoline-powered cars.

Overall cost will fall 30 percent compared with that of Nissan's current EVs. And Nissan believes it can save 150 billion yen ($990.7 million) in development costs for its wave of next-generation models.

Nissan said it believes it can deliver a solid-state battery by 2028 that holds twice the energy of a lithium ion battery, charges in one-third the time and costs $75 per kilowatt-hour.

Nissan also said it thinks it can whittle that cost to $65, achieving price parity with gasoline cars.

Battery breakthroughs

Other new battery technologies in the works include a next-generation nickel-cobalt-manganese lithium ion battery, a lithium iron phosphate battery.

The nickel-cobalt-manganese lithium ion battery will reduce quick-charging time by 50 percent and improve energy density by 50 percent over the battery used in the Ariya crossover EV.

Nissan said it plans to debut the lithium ion battery in a three-row crossover EV slated to arrive in the fiscal year ending March 31, 2029.

The iron phosphate batteries, which typically cost less than their nickel-cobalt-manganese counterparts, will register a 30 percent cost reduction compared with the standard lithium ion battery in the Sakura.

The iron phosphate power pack will be made in Japan and launch in a domestic mini vehicle in the fiscal year ending March 31, 2029.

Cooking school

Solid-state battery packs promise safety, cost, weight and performance improvements over today's lithium ion batteries. And, crucially, they could spur wider EV adoption in popular segments such as pickups, large SUVs and sporty cars, where weight and size are issues.

But the batteries still face big technological and quality-control hurdles. Ceramic separators can crack, dendrites can form in the puttylike electrolyte — short-circuiting the battery — and high-volume manufacturing requires exacting standards that are hard to sustain.

Manufacturing challenges include properly mixing raw materials for the electrolyte and electrodes to an even consistency and then applying the mixture smoothly in layers.

Finding the right ingredients was also a task.

Nissan settled on a sulfide solid electrolyte with a binding material that permeates the electrolyte particles instead of coating them. This allows for a better transit of ions over previous chemistries in which the binding coat interfered with a smooth transfer.

Nissan also opted for a lithium metal chemistry, instead of graphite, in the anode. This delivers more energy capacity but is trickier to handle because of a wider range of expansion and contraction during charging and discharging. It must also be devoid of impurities to avoid thermal runaway.

The materials must be thoroughly mixed to avert dendrites and maximize ion flow. Nissan spent a lot of time studying the mixing processes used in the culinary world to perfect its technique.

“It’s just like cooking,” said Kazuhiko Murata, corporate vice president of powertrain and EV production engineering said. “We benchmarked a lot of cooking methods from a completely different industry, which led to a uniform mixing process.”

Finally, the electrolyte needs to be cooked in a dry room. This requires the entire area to be sealed and pumped dry with a dehumidifier to keep moisture out.

Nissan’s pilot plant covers about 107,000 square feet. It occupies a portion of a larger plant and will have ample room for expansion after mass production begins.

Nissan expects to employ up to 200 people there.

Global race

Japanese automakers are among the more bullish about the technology. Toyota, Nissan and Honda see solid state coming to market in the latter half of this decade.

European players including Volkswagen Group and BMW are also concentrating on solid state, while Chinese hopefuls including SAIC Motors and GAC Aion's Hyper brand have joined the fray.

Toyota Motor Corp. announced last year that it plans two versions of all-solid-state batteries.

The first will arrive between 2027 and 2028. Toyota targets a range of more than 621 miles for that battery and predicts it will recharge from 10 to 80 percent in about 10 minutes.

The second will arrive after that, at an unspecified date. Toyota has said it will have a range exceeding 745 miles.

Toyota delivered a prototype vehicle powered by solid-state batteries in 2020 with its LQ pod car. But mass-producing the batteries with sufficient speed and quality is fraught with complexity.

Meanwhile, Honda is building a pilot line for solid-state batteries and banking on the technology to power its transition to being a combustion-free automaker by 2040.