MG’s solid state battery for 2025 is less revolutionary than expected

MG Motor, a Chinese state-owned SAIC Motor subsidiary, has announced plans to launch an electric vehicle in 2025 powered by a semi-solid state battery. This move comes after earlier statements suggested MG would be the first to deploy a fully solid-state battery. The hybrid solution implies the car brand is backtracking on its earlier full solid-state battery promise.

Zhou Yu, General Manager of the MG brand division, revealed the news a few days ago via a post on China’s Weibo platform. He stated that the semi-solid state battery would come as standard on MG’s first new model of 2025 and assured potential buyers that it “wouldn’t be expensive.”

While the industry awaited a fully solid-state pack, the brand will now choose an intermediate step with a semi-solid-state solution. However, this timeline still puts the Chinese car brands ahead of their European counterparts.

What happened?

This announcement appears to walk back earlier statements from Yu Jingmin, the General Manager of SAIC Passenger Vehicle, who suggested a few months ago that an MG model with a fully solid-state battery would be introduced as early as Q2 2025.

Two potential scenarios have emerged from this shift. First, the fully solid-state battery may have been delayed to 2026 or beyond. Alternatively, MG may have quietly downgraded its ambitions from a solid-state to a semi-solid-state battery.

Unlike fully solid-state batteries, which use a solid electrolyte to replace the liquid electrolytes in current lithium-ion cells, semi-solid-state batteries combine liquid gel and solid electrolytes.

While they offer many similar benefits as solid-state technology, such as improved energy density and thermal stability, they are less expensive to produce and more straightforward to scale for mass production.

Long bridge toward full solid state

A semi-solid state is a logical step toward a full-solid state, but experts agree that the feasibility gap for production remains big between the two technologies. Unlike all-solid-state batteries, semi-solid technology does not require a complete overhaul of existing production lines, reducing the time and capital investment needed for commercialization.

The new announcement puts MG more in line with the ambitions of other carmakers, like Toyota or Porsche, which don’t believe it can happen before 2027 or 2028. Mercedes recently announced that it would begin testing EVs with solid-state batteries on public roads in the coming months to scale production by 2030.

However, to accelerate the process, the Chinese brands have joined forces in the  All-Solid-State Battery Collaborative Innovation Platform (CASIP), which the government officially backs. However, as the timeline for that supply chain also points toward 2030, Jingmin might have been overplaying his hand.

Slated for the Cyberster?

The semi-solid-state technology, presumably debuting in a new version of the Cyberster called GTS, will still give MG an edge. However, the move is less pioneering than initially believed, as another SAIC brand, IM Motors, has already commercialized a semi-solid state battery for its IM L6 saloon.

The technology in the upcoming MG Cyberster GTS will likely draw heavily on the same development, as both brands operate under SAIC’s umbrella.

Its features remain impressive, though, with 900V ultrafast charging and a range of more than 1,000 kilometers (according to the Chinese cycle). However, it is quite big, with a capacity of 123.7 kWh and an energy density of over 300 Wh/kg.