Toyota bets it can out-battery the competition

When you turn up late to the party you had better make an entrance.

Japan's Toyota attempted to do that this week when it said that not only was it going to start taking the BEV market seriously with a dedicated production process but that it is going to make cars capable of longer range than the competition, powered by superior batteries.

Some of this it plans to achieve through greater mastery of lithium-ion battery technology of the kind that power existing BEVs, while some of it will be from commercialisation of solid-state battery technology that has thus far eluded rival OEMs.