Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) may soon see competition from Nissan Motor Co. LTD (OTC:NSANY) thanks to new battery technology developed with help from United State National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
What Happened: Nissan is working on a solid-state battery — a battery that uses solid electrodes and a solid electrolyte instead of one that is liquid — that could give its electric vehicles an edge over competitors, according to a recent Associated Press report.
The company is getting help from NASA in developing the technology to launch a pilot plant in 2024 and use the technology in its first product in 2028.
Nissan's solid-state battery is reportedly stable enough for use in pacemakers — resulting in a battery with half the volume that fully charges in 15 minutes instead of hours.
Nissan's collaboration with NASA, with involvement from the University of California San Diego, will see the testing of numerous metals in the battery. Corporate Vice President Kazuhiro Doi told reporters that this kind of battery is needed by both NASA and Nissan.
Doi also explained that Nissan and NASA use an "original material informatics platform" to test various combinations in a simulation and estimate what works best among hundreds of thousands of materials. The goal of this system is to avoid using expensive materials such as the rare metals that are used in the lithium-ion batteries — such as those used by Tesla.
