Toyota and Nissan develop new battery technologies

Toyota and Nissan are developing new battery technologies to create hybrid models with longer range (references, images, inquiries) and electric models
.

This month, Toyota and Nissan automakers announced that the new generation of hybrid models and electric models will be equipped with larger capacity batteries, resulting in increased power and higher range
.
Toyota is currently developing ways to replace lithium-ion batteries with magnesium-ion batteries, and Toyota Research Institute for North America announced that engineers have found a way
to make batteries out of magnesium.
Nissan is looking to increase the storage
capacity of existing lithium batteries by using additives.
Toyota and Nissan's R&D efforts in battery technology combine automotive manufacturing with the chemical industry, opening up new areas
for the production of electric vehicles in the future.

Toyota said that magnesium-ion batteries will be superior to lithium-ion batteries in two aspects: 1, can store more electricity, because lithium ions are in the form of 1-valent electrons, so it can only be combined with the same electron, and magnesium ions exist in the form of 2-valent positive ions, so if the two batteries use the same density of magnesium ions and lithium ions, then the magnesium-ion battery storage will be twice
that of lithium-ions.
2, magnesium-ion batteries will be safer than lithium-ion batteries, because lithium is an active metal element, unstable, easy to fire, and magnesium-ion batteries avoid this potential risk factor
.

To develop a magnesium-ion battery with higher power storage, it is imperative to find an electrolyte that can not only exert the full function of the battery, but also facilitate the movement of magnesium ions
.
Toyota North America Research Institute said they have found a way to create a magnesium electrolyte, which is to use magnesium-based hydrogen storage materials as the magnesium electrolyte, but this technology will take 20 years to achieve
.

Compared with Toyota, Nissan's technology under development may be realized faster, and Nissan's pure electric model Leaf has been limited by cruising range, resulting in mediocre
market competitiveness.
Nissan is currently working on a way to increase the capacity of existing lithium-ion batteries — by adding a chemical called amorphous silicon oxide — that binds more lithium ions to boost the battery's overall power
storage.
However, Nissan's R&D engineers face the challenge of knowing the atomic structure of amorphous silica so far that it is difficult to calculate the amount and proportion
of this substance.
Therefore, Nissan's R&D personnel need to develop a new way to obtain the atomic structure
of amorphous silica.

Nissan said the discovery opens a new door
to the use of new chemistry to create long-range lithium-ion batteries.
Takao Asami, Vice President of R&D and Advanced Engineering for the Renault-Nissan Alliance, said: "The generation of this method is a crucial step for the future development of a new generation of high-performance lithium-ion batteries, which will surely become a core technology
in the future.
In addition, the research and development of Nissan's new battery technology is carried out
jointly by Nissan's internal researchers and staff from various research institutions in Japan.