Chery, China's top car exporter, bets $1.49B on solid-state battery test

Chery Automobile, China's largest car exporter by deliveries, is putting its balance sheet and credibility behind a technology that has spent a decade in the lab. On Thursday, chairman Yin Tongyue of the state-owned Anhui-based automaker will invest 10 billion yuan (US$1.49 billion) in solid-state battery technology over the next two years, and begin testing the batteries next year. The number is the big part of the story, but the date is what matters: a state-owned group with this kind of delivery volume does not usually announce a test window unless it believes the physics and the factory can be solved in that time.