Apparently BYD will be releasing one of its models with a sodium ion solid-state battery this year. That is, it's verified and working and ready to ship.
Your link says "may" not "will", and is from December last year.
I shall keep my fingers crossed that it does happen, but with no "They're actively being manufactured right now" news articles, I'm not hopeful that they'll be available to buy in the next two months.
Well, he's also jump-started all of car electrification. I agree FSD is bad, but unless you paid for it, it's a weird thing to focus on given the bigger picture impact Tesla and Musk have had.
> Toyota has lobbied against strict fuel efficiency standards in Australia and worldwide and is one of the top three funders of lobbyists against 100% battery electric vehicles (BEVs). Various Toyota executives have sent mixed messages about the future ascendency of hydrogen-powered cars, the efficacy of mild hybrids vs. BEVs, and a future BEV strategy based on solid-state batteries. None of these technologies have proven their worth yet, and I wonder if these messages are merely a ploy for Toyota to maintain its current hybrid vehicle (HEV) dominance and profit margins.
I've got plenty of gripes with Musk -- not the least of which are Tesla's marketing of assistive driving technologies, which the folks there had to know would be misleading.
I think this is somewhat unfair, though: that $10k is for a software unlock. Battery tech is hardware. Toyota can't charge extra for advanced batteries before said batteries are ready for mass production, for obvious reasons -- so they didn't really have the opportunity to engage in this kind of broken promise.
Rather around the early-mid 2020s which has been impacted by COVID.
I am always reluctant to bet against Toyota since they have a long history of delivering.