While automakers are racing to place electric vehicles by 2020, there is also a race to develop smarter, safer and cheaper battery technology that will power them.

Honda Motor Co is weighing the idea of developing solid-state batteries for electric vehicles (Evs), with a growing number of automakers looking for ways to power next generation cars that have reduced vehicle emissions.

With tightening emission regulations, automakers from across the globe are moving to electric cars which will need high capacity, low cost batteries that have fast charging time to power them. For automakers the cost of producing the new batteries should be lower than those for lithium-ion ones.

“We’ve been researching all solid-state batteries,” said Teruhiko Tatebe, Honda’s spokesman. “At the moment we’re not developing them with another automaker.”

On Thursday, Japan’s Kyodo News reported that Honda and Nissan Motor Co were developing all solid-state EV batteries.

Nissan was not immediately available for comment.

Many large automakers, including Volkswagen and Toyota Motor Corp are developing this technology which have better safety than their lithium-ion cousins since the liquid electrolyte is replaced with a solid conductive material.

Incidentally, earlier this month, Toyota had said it was co-developing these next generation batteries with Panasonic in order to balance the high R&D costs.

Honda plans on mass-producing its solid-state batteries sometime in the early 2020s and has highlighted the need to accelerate the pace of battery development.