Toyota To Invest Billions To Produce 200 Gigawatts Of Batteries Per Annum

The Japanese automobile company Toyota is often listed as a key witness against battery-electric individual traffic. But that should be over now that the company is investing heavily in battery technologies.

The company announced that it intends to invest around $13.6 billion in batteries this decade. The largest part of the investment planning, with around 9 billion dollars, is the development of our own production capacities. Toyota plans to have ten production lines in operation by 2025, and later it could be up to 70, which will then be attached to various plants around the world.

In the course of the announcement of the plans, Toyota’s chief technology officer Masahiko Maeda spoke of wanting to build up capacities for annual production of up to 200-gigawatt hours. This corresponds roughly to what other global automotive groups are planning to switch completely to battery-electric cars. For example, Volkswagen and Ford have set goals of 240-gigawatt hours each.

Wide range

Toyota’s current plans for the product range include around 70 different electric models of all options by 2025 – i.e. battery-electric, hybrid and hydrogen-powered vehicles. The enormous investments in the battery sector indicate, however, that battery-electric models in particular will come to the fore at Toyota.

The Japanese company was once the pioneer in hybrid vehicles and then started developing hydrogen drives. These remain part of the product range, but it is clear that the use of hydrogen will ultimately be significantly more expensive than the battery-electric drive due to its lower efficiency so that one will probably only serve a niche here.