Solid-State EV Batteries in 2026: Which Cars Have Them, and When You Can Buy One

In late August 2025, a lightly modified Mercedes-Benz EQS left Stuttgart and drove to Malmö, Sweden, without stopping to charge. It covered 1,205 kilometers (about 749 miles) and still had 137 kilometers of range left when it arrived. Under the floor was a battery built with lithium-metal cells from Factorial Energy, a startup near Boston, and Mercedes called it a solid-state battery.

More than a year later, "solid-state" is everywhere in EV marketing. You can buy a Chinese hatchback that wears the label for about $14,000. Battery makers and carmakers keep circling 2027 as the year everything changes. Yet the boss of the world’s largest battery maker says the technology is only at "level 4" on a nine-step scale, and China has written a national standard partly to stop companies from calling cells solid-state when they are not.

So which cars really have solid-state batteries in 2026, what is the difference between "semi-solid" and the real thing, and when can you actually buy one? Here is where things stand in November 2026.

The short answer: which cars have solid-state batteries?

No car on sale anywhere in the world uses an all-solid-state battery in November 2026. Every production car sold with "solid-state" or "semi-solid-state" in its pitch, such as the MG4 Anxin Edition, the IM L6 and Nio’s 150 kWh pack, uses a hybrid cell that still contains some liquid electrolyte. True all-solid-state cells are in test cars and pilot lines. The earliest small batches are promised for 2027 and 2028, and the people building them say mass-market cars are unlikely before 2030.

What a solid-state battery actually is

Every lithium-ion battery has the same basic parts: a negative electrode (the anode), a positive electrode (the cathode), and an electrolyte between them that lets lithium ions shuttle back and forth as the battery charges and discharges. In the battery in your phone or almost any EV today, that electrolyte is a flammable liquid soaked into a thin plastic separator.

A solid-state battery replaces the liquid with a solid that still conducts lithium ions. The candidates fall into a few families: sulfides, which are soft and conduct ions well but react with moisture; oxides, such as garnet-type ceramics, which are stable but brittle; and polymers, which are easy to process but usually need warmth to work well. The idea is old. Michael Faraday noticed that solid silver sulfide and lead fluoride conduct electricity when heated in the 1830s, which laid the groundwork for the field now called solid-state ionics.

The appeal is threefold. A solid electrolyte does not burn the way a liquid can, so the cell should be harder to push into thermal runaway. It may also allow a pure lithium-metal anode instead of graphite, which is the main route to much higher energy density, potentially 400 to 500 watt-hours per kilogram at the cell level, against roughly 250 for good nickel-based cells today. And some designs promise faster charging, because they avoid the lithium plating problems that limit liquid cells.

Why "semi-solid" is not solid-state: China’s new definition

For years, "semi-solid," "quasi-solid" and plain "solid-state" were used loosely. Some cells sold under those names have a solid or gel component plus a smaller amount of liquid electrolyte. That can be a real improvement, but it is not the technology the headlines promise.

China has now drawn a line. National standard GB/T 48093.1-2026, "Solid-state battery for electric vehicle, Part 1: Terms and classification," was published in late August 2026 and takes effect on January 1, 2028. It sorts traction batteries into three groups: liquid batteries, hybrid solid-liquid batteries, and solid-state batteries. The term "semi-solid-state battery" has no place in it.

The test is refreshingly blunt. A cell is cut open and checked for visible leaking liquid. If it passes, it is weighed, baked in a vacuum oven at 120°C for six hours so anything volatile evaporates, then weighed again. To count as solid-state, it can lose no more than 0.5 percent of its mass. An earlier industry group standard from the China Society of Automotive Engineers, published in May 2025, used the same test but allowed up to 1 percent.

Category under China’s standard	What it means	Examples in 2026
Liquid battery	Conventional cell with a liquid electrolyte	Almost every EV on the road
Hybrid solid-liquid battery	Solid or gel electrolyte plus some liquid; covers what was sold as "semi-solid"	MG4 Anxin Edition, IM L6, Nio 150 kWh pack
Solid-state battery	No visible liquid and at most 0.5% mass loss in the 120°C vacuum test	Test cars and pilot lines only

The standard is a recommended one (the "/T" in GB/T), not a mandatory rule, but in China’s EV market it sets the vocabulary regulators, carmakers and buyers will use.

Cars you can buy now with "solid-state" in the pitch

Hybrid solid-liquid cells are real products, mostly in China. These are the best-known examples.

MG4 Anxin Edition: SAIC launched the redesigned MG4 in China in August 2025 with a semi-solid battery variant priced at 102,800 yuan, discounted to 99,800 yuan, or about $14,000. The cells come from QingTao Energy, a startup backed by SAIC, and deliveries began in December 2025. CnEVPost noted that the pack is no range breakthrough: local reports put its energy density at about 180 Wh/kg and its range at about 537 kilometers on China’s generous CLTC test cycle, similar to the lithium iron phosphate versions of the same car. The pitch is safety and cold-weather behavior, not range.

IM L6: SAIC’s upmarket IM Motors brand offers a 130 kWh semi-solid "Lightyear" pack in its L6 sedan, also using QingTao cells.

Nio ET7 and others: Nio began series production of a 150 kWh semi-solid pack from supplier WeLion in April 2024. It has an energy density of about 261 Wh/kg and let the ET7 sedan pass 1,000 kilometers on the CLTC cycle. Nio offers the pack through its battery swapping network rather than selling it outright with cars, and Electrek reported that it was pulled after only a few hundred units because of weak demand and high cost.

None of these cars is sold in the United States. In America, the solid-state label appears mostly in press releases, not in showrooms.

The test cars: Mercedes, Factorial and Karma

The Mercedes drive to Malmö remains the most impressive public demonstration. The battery was developed with Mercedes-AMG High Performance Powertrains, the company’s Formula 1 engine center in Brixworth, England. Mercedes says it holds 25 percent more usable energy than the standard EQS pack at a similar size and weight. Because lithium-metal cells swell and shrink as they charge and discharge, the pack uses pneumatic actuators to keep steady pressure on the cells. Mercedes chief technology officer Markus Schäfer said the goal is to bring the technology into series production "by the end of the decade."

There is a catch in the wording. Factorial’s FEST cells, used in that car, contain a small amount of a gel-like electrolyte, so Autoweek describes them as semi-solid. They reach up to 391 Wh/kg. Factorial says its fully solid, zero-liquid Solstice cells, made with a dry coating process and aimed at about 450 Wh/kg, should be production-ready by the end of the decade.

The first production car with Factorial cells is likely to be very expensive. Karma Automotive told Autoweek its Kaveya, a coupe projected at more than 1,000 horsepower, will debut in late 2027 with FEST cells, priced at $300,000 with rear-wheel drive and $400,000 with all-wheel drive. Factorial also has a Dodge Charger Daytona test car with Stellantis and partnerships with Hyundai and Volkswagen’s battery company, PowerCo.

Who is promising what, and when

Here is how the main players describe their all-solid-state plans as of November 2026. Note how often "2027" means pilot production or a few hundred vehicles, not cars for sale at your local dealer.

Company	Chemistry	What it says	Timing
CATL (China)	Sulfide	20 Ah trial cells; small-batch pilot production next	Pilot 2027; mass use unlikely before 2030
BYD (China)	Sulfide	Demonstration use in vehicles first	Demos around 2027; scale after 2030
Toyota with Idemitsu (Japan)	Sulfide	Launch BEVs with all-solid-state batteries	2027 to 2028
Samsung SDI (South Korea)	Sulfide	Humanoid robots first, then EVs	Mass production from late 2027
QuantumScape (US)	Oxide ceramic separator	Pilot cells shipping to partners; licensing model	100 MWh line targeted for 2028
Factorial (US)	Gel hybrid now; solid next	FEST cells in Karma car; Solstice all-solid cells	FEST 2027; Solstice by about 2030

CATL: Chairman Robin Zeng was frank at the World Economic Forum’s "Summer Davos" in Dalian in June 2026. "Based on a measure of level one to nine, the technology has only reached level four so far," he said, and he called the chance of solid-state batteries reaching millions of vehicles before 2030 very small. CATL still has more than 1,000 people on the problem and plans small-batch production of 20 Ah sulfide cells in 2027.

BYD: The battery business’s chief technology officer, Sun Huajun, said in February 2025 that BYD would begin demonstration installations around 2027, with true large-scale use not expected until after 2030.

Toyota: Toyota and refiner Idemitsu Kosan agreed in October 2023 to build a supply chain for sulfide solid electrolytes. Toyota still targets the market launch of battery EVs with all-solid-state batteries in 2027 to 2028, but it has not named a model.

Samsung SDI: On its second-quarter 2026 earnings call, the company said it is preparing mass production of all-solid-state batteries in the second half of 2027, and that its first commercial customer will most likely be a maker of humanoid robots rather than a carmaker.

QuantumScape: The California company opened its Eagle Line pilot line in San Jose in February 2026. Its third-quarter 2026 shareholder letter says its cells were thermally stable well above 300°C in customer and outside lab tests, and that it has billed Honda for the first time under a development deal. A 100 MWh production line built with Germany’s Muehlbauer Group is targeted to start in 2028. In September 2025, QuantumScape and Volkswagen’s PowerCo showed a Ducati V21L electric race bike running on its cells.

China’s government has put a date on it too. A battery industry plan for 2026 to 2030 from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and six other agencies aims for initial large-scale application of all-solid-state batteries by 2030, without saying how many vehicles that means.

The earliest small batches are promised for 2027 and 2028, and the people building them say mass-market cars are unlikely before 2030.

Why solid-state batteries are so hard to make

A liquid electrolyte has one quiet superpower: it flows. It wets every surface of the electrode particles, so ions always have a path. Two solids pressed together only touch at tiny points. As the electrodes swell and shrink through thousands of charging cycles, gaps open up between them, resistance rises and the cell loses capacity. CATL’s chief manufacturing officer, Ni Jun, has called this solid-to-solid contact breakdown the central obstacle.

That is why many solid-state cells need to be squeezed. Researchers often run lithium-metal cells at pressures of several megapascals, and the Mercedes pack needed its own pneumatic actuators to manage cell swelling. Packaging that pressure into a car without adding much weight is its own engineering problem.

Then there are dendrites, thin metal filaments of lithium that can grow from the anode during fast charging, force their way through cracks in a ceramic electrolyte and short-circuit the cell. Solid electrolytes were once expected to block them completely. In practice, dendrites can still find their way through cracks and grain boundaries.

Cost may be the hardest wall of all. In late October 2026, CATL put all-solid-state cell costs at 1.6 to 2.2 yuan per watt-hour, three to five times the 0.39 to 0.50 yuan of lithium iron phosphate cells, according to East Asia Brief. Sulfide electrolytes also react with moisture to release toxic hydrogen sulfide, so factories need extremely dry rooms.

Meanwhile, ordinary lithium-ion cells keep improving. CATL’s own condensed and liquid cells keep gaining energy density and charging speed, and cheaper chemistries such as lithium iron phosphate and sodium-ion are taking over the entry level. Solid-state has to beat a moving target.

What this means if you are buying an EV now

If you are shopping for an EV in 2026, solid-state should not change your plans. No all-solid-state car is on sale, and the first ones in 2027 and 2028 will be small batches, mostly in premium or specialty vehicles, and mostly in China, Japan and South Korea first.

If you see "solid-state" or "semi-solid-state" in an ad, read it as "hybrid solid-liquid." Those batteries can bring modest gains in safety or energy density, but judge the car the way you would judge any EV: rated range, charging speed, price and warranty. A good liquid-electrolyte battery today, with a fast-charging network around it, will serve most drivers well for years.

And if you are waiting for a real solid-state car at a normal price, the experts’ timeline points to the early 2030s. That is not a reason to skip a good EV now. A car you buy today will most likely still be on the road when solid-state finally arrives.

Solid-state battery FAQ

Does any car have a solid-state battery in 2026?

No production car uses an all-solid-state battery. Cars sold as "solid-state" or "semi-solid-state," such as the MG4 Anxin Edition, the IM L6 and the Nio ET7 with its 150 kWh pack, use hybrid solid-liquid cells that still contain some liquid electrolyte.

What is the difference between semi-solid and solid-state batteries?

A semi-solid, or hybrid solid-liquid, battery mixes a solid or gel electrolyte with some liquid. A solid-state battery has essentially no liquid. Under China’s standard, it must show no visible liquid and lose no more than 0.5 percent of its mass after six hours in a 120°C vacuum.

When will solid-state batteries be in cars?

Small batches are promised from 2027 and 2028 by Toyota, CATL, BYD, Samsung SDI and others, and Karma plans a $300,000 coupe with Factorial’s semi-solid cells in late 2027. CATL’s chairman and BYD’s battery chief both say mass adoption is unlikely before 2030.

Are solid-state batteries safer?

They should be harder to set on fire because the solid electrolyte does not burn like a liquid, and QuantumScape reports its cells stayed stable above 300°C in testing. But lithium-metal anodes and dendrites bring their own risks, and long-term safety in real cars is still being proven.

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