Toyota Motor Corporation’s North American unit announced Monday that it will invest $3.4 billion (380 billion yen) in U.S. vehicle battery development and manufacture through 2030.
Together with Toyota Tsusho, the carmaker’s metals trading arm and a unit of the Toyota Group, the world’s largest automaker by volume wants to establish a new firm and build a new U.S. automobile battery plant.
The new plant, which will feature a $1.29 billion investment from Toyota through 2031, is scheduled to open in 2025 and will create 1,750 new employment in the United States.
The funds are part of a $13.5 billion investment it made in September to develop batteries and its battery supply system globally by 2030. In September, the world’s largest automaker said it planned to reduce the cost of its batteries by 30 percent or more by improving the materials used and the structure of the cells.
Toyota stated that the new company’s initial focus will be on producing hybrid vehicle batteries. Toyota has stated that it will reveal manufacturing capacity, the new company’s corporate structure, and the factory location at a later date.
The investment, according to Toyota North America CEO Ted Ogawa, “will assist usher in more affordable electrified automobiles for U.S. consumers.”
Automakers around the world are investing billions of dollars to ramp up battery and electric vehicle production as they face increasingly stringent environmental regulations.
Toyota has launched a lobbying campaign in the United States to persuade lawmakers not to include a $4,500 tax credit for union-made electric automobiles.
President Joe Biden of the United States signed an executive order in August setting a goal for half of all new vehicles delivered in 2030 to be zero-emissions vehicles.
In August, Detroit’s Big Three automakers stated that by 2030, they hope to sell “40-50 percent of annual U.S. volumes of electric vehicles.”
Toyota announced this month that it has “unconditionally committed” to meeting the task of making half of the vehicles it sells electric by 2030.
Biden’s 50% goal and the automakers’ 2030 goals includes battery electric, fuel cell and plug-in hybrid vehicles that also have a gasoline-engine.
