YOKOHAMA, Japan (AP) — Nissan expects to mass produce electric vehicles powered by advanced next-generation batteries by early 2029, the company said Tuesday during a media tour of an unfinished pilot plant.

Japan’s legacy automakers have fallen behind newer rivals like America’s Tesla and China’s BYD in the emerging all-electric auto sector.

But Nissan, like other companies, sees a chance to catch up and perhaps leap ahead with a new kind of battery that promises to be more powerful, cheaper, safer and faster to charge than the lithium-ion batteries in use today.

Solid-state batteries, which replace the corrosive liquids found in conventional batteries with solid metals, are widely seen as the next step for EVs, and leading automakers are racing to develop versions that can be mass produced.

Rivals like Volkswagen and Toyota have also announced efforts to produce solid-state EVs, with Toyota setting a date of 2027-28 to begin bringing them to market.