If you’d believed the hype around the first batch of autonomous concepts a decade or so ago, you’d have expected to be being driven home from the pub by now in a truly driverless car with no steering wheel.
Yet the mood has long since shifted, and now a line has been drawn between driver-assistance technology and true autonomy that cars seem unlikely to ever cross - for many reasons, but perhaps chiefly the legislative nightmare they open up and the funding they require.
The idea of solid-state technology as a means of bringing down the cost and weight of EV batteries – while improving range, power density and resistance to degradation – has been around even longer than any serious discussion about autonomous cars.
You can date solid-state chat right back to when the first wave of mass-produced EVs arrived at the start of the last decade.
Toyota, Nissan, Honda, Volkswagen have all recently confirmed various developments to their roll-out of the technology, with the former two both firmly (and repeatedly) committing
