Toyota unveils sweeping plans for new battery technology, EV innovation

Toyota unveils sweeping plans for new battery technology, EV innovation - The Globe and Mail


Toyota will introduce high-performance, solid-state batteries and other technologies to improve the driving range and cut costs of future electric vehicles (EVs), the automaker said on Tuesday, a strategic pivot that sent its shares higher.


The Japanese giant’s technology roadmap, covering aspects as varied as next-generation battery development and a radical redesign of factories, amounted to the automaker’s fullest disclosure of its plan to compete in the fast-growing market for EVs where it has lagged rivals led by Tesla


The plan comes a day before an annual shareholders meeting where governance and strategy – including a slow pivot to battery EVs under former CEO Akio Toyoda – will be scrutinized.

Shares of the world’s best-selling automaker jumped 5 per cent on the day to 2,173 yen, the highest since August.

Toyota said it aims to launch next-generation lithium-ion batteries from 2026 offering longer ranges and quicker charging.

It also trumpeted a “technological breakthrough” that addresses durability problems in solid-state batteries and said it is developing means to mass produce those batteries, targeting commercialisation over 2027-2028.

Solid-state batteries can hold more energy than current liquid electrolyte batteries. Automakers and analysts expect them to speed transition to EVs by addressing a major consumer concern: range.

Still, such batteries are expensive and likely to remain so for years. Toyota will hedge with better-performing lithium iron phosphate batteries, a cheaper alternative to lithium-ion batteries that have spurred EV adoption in China, the world’s largest vehicle market.

At the high end of the market, Toyota said it would produce an EV with a more efficient lithium-ion battery offering a range of 1,000 km (621 miles). By comparison, the long-range version of the lithium-ion-powered Tesla Model Y, the world’s best-selling EV, can drive for about 530 km based on U.S. standards.

An EV powered by a solid-state battery would have a range of 1,200 km and charging time of just 10 minutes, Toyota said. By comparison, the Tesla Supercharger network – the largest of its kind – offers the equivalent of 321 km of charge in 15 minutes.

Toyota did not detail expected costs or required investment for the plans.

Engineers at the automaker have been considering a reboot of its EV strategy since last year to better compete.

The roadmap detailed on Tuesday showed that under new CEO Koji Sato, Toyota has adopted much of the revamp that engineers and planners have been developing as options for months.

That includes use of electric-axle and other technology from suppliers such as Aisin and Denso.

“What we want to achieve is to change the future with BEVs,” Takero Kato, president of new Toyota EV unit BEV Factory, said in a video posted on the automaker’s YouTube channel on Tuesday.

Toyota said it was developing a dedicated EV platform to reduce the cost of new models and a heavily automated assembly line that would do away with the conveyor belt system that has defined auto production since Henry Ford over 100 years ago.

In Toyota’s “self-propelling” assembly line, cars under production would drive themselves through the process.

It also said it would use Giga casting to cut production costs, adopting an innovation pioneered by Tesla using massive, aluminum casting machines to reduce vehicle complexity.

Koji Endo, senior analyst at SBI Securities, said he was surprised by Toyota’s move to counter Tesla’s lead in production efficiency. “I’m not sure yet Toyota can push back in a counter offensive, but it’s getting ready to try,” he said.

Toyota’s BEV Factory, established in May, aims to produce about 1.7 million vehicles by 2030, Kato said – about half of the 3.5 million EVs Toyota aims to sell annually by that year.

In April, the automaker sold 8,584 EVs worldwide, including under its Lexus brand, accounting for more than 1 per cent of its global sales in a single month for the first time.

Toyota sold almost 10.5 million vehicles in 2022, and has a market value of about $254-billion. By contrast, Tesla sold one-eighth as many vehicles yet is valued at around $791-billion, a premium reflecting investor belief in Tesla’s growth potential.

Toyota has long said it wants to offer consumers a choice of new-energy vehicles, including petrol-electric hybrids and hydrogen fuel cells as well as battery EVs, as part of the industry’s transition from petrol-powered vehicles.

 

So… when ya picking up your new Cybertruck?

Cybertruck | Tesla Canada


And let’s not forget my new roadster./

Roadster | Tesla Canada


But I really wanna take a leaf out of Arnold’s vacation experiences and book my trip to Mars…

 

They seem to be prioritizing GROWTH over profits…..

Tesla will prioritize sales growth ahead of profit, Elon Musk says - The Globe and Mail


But it’s about time Toyota started taking electrification seriously.

 

OPINION
At Toyota, activist investors’ ESG, electric-vehicle agenda put the company at risk

Opinion: At Toyota, activist investors’ ESG, electric-vehicle agenda put the company at risk - The Globe and Mail

For decades, activist investors have been the tails wagging corporate dogs.

Typically, these rabble-rousers put pressure on companies because things are going wrong – sales and profits are headed in the wrong direction, operations are broken, or senior management is incompetent or corrupt.

And then there’s Toyota. Last fall activist investors, including progressive pension funds and asset managers in the U.S. and Europe, decided that being the best-selling automaker in the world three years running and leading the green revolution with its groundbreaking hybrid models wasn’t good enough. They pushed to oust board chair Akio Toyoda, its president and chief executive officer at the time.

The reason? Mr. Toyoda wasn’t drinking the electric-vehicle Kool-Aid quickly enough, was being cagey about the company’s climate lobbying efforts, and favoured a multi-option pathway to carbon neutrality that included hybrids, hydrogen and gas options, as well EVs.

In revealing remarks before he stepped down in January, Mr. Toyoda said executives who disagreed with a single-option EV strategy had felt silenced by the strong-arming of the environmental lobby. “They think it’s the trend so they didn’t speak out loudly,” he said of management.

This week, however, Toyota shareholders re-elected Mr. Toyoda to the board at the company’s annual meeting. Now, along with Koji Sato, the automaker’s new president, they will see if they can placate the EV fervour of the activist flank and still run a successful company.

The challenges faced by Mr. Toyoda and Mr. Sato reflect the increasing power of the environmental, social and governance (ESG) movement to push agendas that may put the viability of companies at risk.

There’s no suggestion the motivation of the ESG faithful isn’t well-meant – but it isn’t always practical when it comes to business sense. And in Toyota’s case, the company has raised legitimate concerns that a rapid, wholesale shift to EVs is perilous for the business, the supply chain and even the environmental health of the communities activists seek to protect.

Since EVs typically are built using about one-third fewer components than conventional gas-powered cars, suppliers to Toyota would feel the impact and jobs would be lost, a strong cultural as well as economic concern in Japan. There are also worries about ample global supplies of lithium, the main component in EV batteries. And there is the infrastructure – the lack of charging stations and the impact on power grids and the supply of clean energy from a massive shift to EVs in a short period of time.

Those concerns are exacerbated by EV mandates in certain places. In California, New York and other states, for example, all new car sales must by EVs by 2035. In California, where the power grid is already weak and subject to regular rolling shutdowns, the shift could be beyond problematic.

The U.S. infrastructure issues are so acute, Ford and General Motors recently announced deals to plug into Tesla’s charging network because the Biden administration has been slow to make a national grid a priority even though it is foundational to its green agenda.

Now, under Mr. Sato, the company has pledged to make EVs a more significant part of its product mix – but it will be a mix. Toyota plans to introduce 10 EV models by 2026, and projects EV sales of 3.5 million by 2030 – about 30 per cent of total sales.

Mr. Sato has not backed off the multi-option strategy of Mr. Toyoda, saying he would “absolutely not waver at all” from a lineup that includes EVs, gas vehicles, hybrids and hydrogen-fuelled cars.

“Our most important way of thinking about a carbon-neutral future is to prepare a variety of options considering local differences in energy and economic environments as well as society and culture,” Mr. Sato said. “Electricity, of course, but also hydrogen, and transiently hybrids and plug-in hybrids, are all promising technologies. We want to find possibilities in all options.”

The strategy may not be fashionable enough to appease everyone, but it makes sense. The dangers of rushing headlong into total EV immersion are not insignificant – and for Toyota, there are clearly worries it would put the business at risk.

Will it work? Those who bet against Toyota do so at their peril. The company didn’t become the world’s largest automaker by accident.

But Mr. Sato might soon find that, sadly, as with his predecessor, he too will have to bow to these activist investors.