Toyota to Invest $5.3B in US Manufacturing, $2.5B in NC

Energy
Wednesday, August 31st, 2022 12:25 pm EDT

The world’s largest automaker announced plans to invest more than $5.3 billion into US and Japanese manufacturing to increase its EV production capacity, with up to $2.5 billion earmarked to expand Toyota’s North Carolina plant and add up to 350 new jobs by 2025.

“This marks another significant milestone for our company,” explains Norm Bafunno, senior vice president, Unit Manufacturing and Engineering at Toyota Motor North America. “(The North Carolina plant) will serve a central role in Toyota’s leadership toward a fully electrified future and will help us meet our goal of carbon neutrality in our vehicles and global operations by 2035.”

Toyota is Committed to Clean Tech

Despite significant criticism from the BEV purists and assertions some of my colleagues that the company’s relatively slow pace towards a commitment to a BEV-only business model is somehow enough cause to ask if the world’s largest carmaker, which made $23 billion in operating profit last year (compared to about $5.5B at Tesla), is “circling the drain,” the company has made significant steps towards its stated goal of becoming fully carbon neutral by 2050. Part of that plan involves electric and electrified vehicles, which Toyota projects will make up some 70% of its total vehicle sales by 2030.

“For over 30 years, Toyota has been innovating and investing in technology to reduce vehicle emissions and achieve carbon reductions,” said Chris Reynolds, chief administrative officer, Toyota Motor North America. “And, although some people believe concentrating resources on one possible solution will achieve the goal more quickly, we believe investing in many different solutions will actually be a faster way to achieve carbon neutrality around the world.”

And, for what it’s worth, a Google search for “Toyota Hunger Strike” didn’t deliver any results about poor vehicle quality and bad customer service.

I, for one, believe that the latest (passed) version of the Inflation Reduction Act, which grants eligibility for the full $7500 EV tax credit to vehicles with batteries larger than 7 kWh was written specifically to favor Toyota, which has a factory in Senator Joe Manchin’s home state of West Virginia (he was the lone Democratic holdout to get the bill passed, and Toyota’s Prius Prime, with an 8.8 kWh non li-ion battery that would now qualify). We talked about that in one of the recent CleanTech Round Talk espisodes of the CleanTech Talk podcast, which I’ve included, below.

Give it a listen, then let us know what you think of Toyota’s big investment into North Carolina in the comments section at the bottom of the page.

The Interesting Battery Mineral Component of the IRA

Or you can listen on Anchor, Apple Podcasts or iTunes, Breaker, Google Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket, Podbean, Radio Public, SoundCloud, Spotify, or Stitcher.

Source | Images: Toyota Motor.

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