Solid-state batteries aren’t likely for Hyundai or Kia before 2030

Hyundai and Kia likely won’t have solid-state batteries ready for electric vehicles before the end of the decade, an executive said in an interview with Automotive News published Thursday.

“I don’t think we can commercialize these batteries before 2030,” Spencer Cho, head of global product planning for Kia, said Feb. 24 at the automaker’s EV Day presentation in Tarragona, Spain.

The three brands under the Hyundai Motor Group umbrella, including Hyundai, Kia, and Genesis, are pooling efforts to develop solid-state batteries in-house, Cho said. But whether that will lead to commercially-viable tech is unclear.

“Once our engineers believe that we have credible technologies that we can bring, then we might produce them on our own, Cho said, adding that “there is a lot of uncertainty about the progress of solid-state batteries.”

Hyundai has been proactive in developing its own LFP batteries that it can scale up for affordable EVs, independent of Chinese suppliers CATL and BYD, which today dominate the chemistry originally developed in the U.S. But the more conservative approach to solid-state batteries could leave the door open for a supplier stepping up ahead of Hyundai’s own in-house effort. Korean supplier SK On, for instance, sounds more optimistic and it recently claimed solid-state battery “breakthroughs”—in two different variants that could be put into running prototypes by 2027 and 2029.

Genesis Neolun Concept – 2024 New York Auto Show

There’s a handful of automaker-supported firms and startups working to develop the solid-state batteries, too. But among automakers themselves working on the tech, the major Japanese automakers appear more confident in it than Hyundai Motor Group. 

Nissan has pushed along with its own internal solid-state battery program and is hoping that they’ll help revolutionize and simplify the EV—with smaller battery packs and less or no cooling needs. Honda, too, has its own solid-state program and sees them arriving before the end of the decade—and as potentially enabling affordable EVs by 2030. Toyota also still plans to ramp up solid-state batteries for production models later this decade.