Toyota is planning to build a new electric vehicle battery plant in Japan, as part of plans to revamp the company’s EV supply chain in Asia.
Nikkei Asia reports that the plant will be housed at an industrial park on Kyushu Island, known colloquially as Japan’s “Silicon Island,” thanks to its status as a global hub for semiconductor and auto manufacturing. The new facility will provide batteries for Lexus vehicles made at Toyota’s Miyata plant roughly 25 miles away. The Miyata plant has the capacity to build 430,000 vehicles annually, the vast majority of which are exported out of Japan.
The hope from Toyota is to build out enough new infrastructure to keep up with Chinese automaker BYD, which passed Tesla to become the world’s leading EV manufacturer in terms of sales in 2023, according to Fortune. Toyota currently plans to invest $32 billion in EV manufacturing by the end of the decade, with a goal to eventually sell 3.5 million EVs combined between its name brand and Lexus brand each year. The company sold 104,000 EVs in 2023, and is hoping to increase that number to 600,000 by 2025.
