Washington, Oct. 18 (BNA) – North American Toyota Motor Corp. (7203.T) said Monday that it will invest about $3.4 billion (380 billion yen) in the development and production of American car batteries in the United States through 2030.
The world’s largest automaker by volume also said it plans to set up a new company and build a new car battery plant in the United States along with Toyota Tsusho (8015.T), the automaker’s metals trading arm and a unit of the Toyota Group, it said. Reuters.
The new plant, which includes Toyota’s $1.29 billion investment planned through 2031, aims to start production in 2025 and is expected to create 1,750 new jobs in the United States.
The money is part of the $13.5 billion it announced in September that it plans to spend globally by 2030 to develop batteries and the battery supply system. The largest Japanese automaker said in September that it aims to cut costs for its batteries by 30% or more by working on the materials used and the way the cells are organized.
Toyota said the new company will initially focus on producing batteries for hybrid cars. Toyota said it would later reveal the production capacity, business structure of the new company and the location of the plant.
Toyota North America CEO Ted Ogawa said in a statement that the investment “will help bring more affordable electric vehicles to American consumers.”
Automakers around the world are investing billions of dollars to ramp up production of batteries and electric cars as they face increasingly stringent environmental regulations.
Toyota launched a lobbying campaign to try to persuade US lawmakers not to include an additional $4,500 tax incentive for union electric vehicles.
In August, US President Joe Biden signed an executive order setting a goal to make half of all new cars sold in 2030 zero-emissions vehicles.
Detroit’s Big Three automakers said in August that they were looking to “achieve sales of 40-50% of annual volumes of electric vehicles in the United States…by 2030.”
Toyota said last month that it “signed unreservedly to the challenge of making half of the vehicles we sell electric” by 2030.
Biden’s 50% target and automakers’ 2030 targets include electric batteries, fuel cells, and plug-in hybrid cars that also have a gasoline engine.
NS