Not much if Toyota can't compete on price. Range has not been an issue since 2015, and the marginal increase in consumer demand won't go up much if a $150k 500 mile electric hits the market.

The real issue for electric is that a 300 mile electric costs more than $35k because the world wide battery production capacity is limited.

If solid state batteries are easier to produce and the price comes down faster than lithium ion then there might be a crossover point by 2030. Until then, this probably means cooler high end sports cars (formula E?)

It would be bad. But honestly Battery Tech to me is "I'll believe it when I see it". Lots of tech isn't a durable or as manufacturable as companies hope. Lab->product is difficult.

Vaporware often claims to work better than shipping products.

This is just the vaporware of the week. Next week there will be another “Tesla killer.”

Even if true, Toyota would still have to up its game on a number of other fronts.

Probably they'll keep making cars, and people will keep buying them. In the long run, maybe they stop being relevant and turn into just another car company.

In the short run, there just isn't enough battery manufacturing capacity for everyone who wants one to buy an electric car with two or three hundred plus miles of range. Toyota can fill some of that demand but probably not all of it.

No word on energy density or other metrics other than charge time. Tesla is also working on solid state batteries as well.

They will have to buy solid-state batteries from someone else.

Volkswagen will be getting their solid-state batteries from QuantumScape: https://electrek.co/2020/12/08/tesla-co-founder-jb-straubel-...

BMW will be getting their solid-state batteries from Solid Power: https://insideevs.com/news/438664/solid-power-all-solid-stat...

TL;DR: Tesla has no IP or differentiation available _currently_, and has a billion dollar plant in Buffalo idling with Panasonic completely pulling out, and in 2020, just hitting the demand Musk predicted for 2018, 500K/year.

The advantage they have is _at least they're on the road_, but, it's going to be tough even going in as the incumbent against a breakthrough and true differentiator like this - if Elon was 100% sober and on point on Battery Day, they still have a shot of not getting _too_ far behind for 3-5 years. But they'll need to figure out how to get to solid state long term without the associated IP or research. :/

nostradamus at this point, don't take it literally, but seriously: You can imagine they'd start looking like Blackberry - niche success among affluent users, ultimately, a stepping stone to the iPhone that'll revolutionize the industry wide, and hopefully Waymo decides to build 1P cars by 2030 and buys out Tesla for $80 billion.

Tesla's current insane valuation crashes, and the company probably folds too. They're heavily invested in Li-Ion's production chain, and this would essentially go right around that.

It's always seemed clear to me that what would kill Tesla dead is Toyota moving into EVs in a big way - the reputation alone would carry them for a good long while.