According to Ars, they're aiming for 180-200 GWh annual capacity by 2030. By 2030 Tesla is aiming for 3 TWh and VW is aiming for 2 TWh. It's only about twice what Tesla consumed last year.
It kind of reminds me of Intel's dismissive attitude throughout the tail end of the '90's and early 2000's about ARM and mobile processing. They completely misjudged it, got dethroned as the best chip manufacturer as a result and are still playing catch-up while paying out the nose trying to do so.
These are the numbers that matter, and they're not good. They're proudly declaring that they will be producing a bit over 2 million EVs per year by 2030. Tesla is currently shipping at a rate of 1m per year.
I'm afraid they're going to use their brand power and customer loyalty to drag everyone else down.
We are still talking 8 years at this point. Toyota is going to respond to actual sales not just what they think sales are going to be. Assuming they produce a desirable EV they could still ramp up production well past that by 2030.
It’s one thing not to be the company on a new technology, it’s another not to ramp up production when your selling out month after month.
It doesn’t take 8 years to build a battery factory. Kicking things off with new models that need extra battery capacity and a factory to manufacture them is a larger hurdle than scaling things after everything is in production.
> larger hurdle than scaling things after everything is in production
The relevant data points we have on this are from Tesla. Elon has been beating the "scaling production is the hardest thing" drum. His callouts around the cost of design vs manufacturing are quite interesting.
Now Toyota has been in the at-scale manufacturing game a long time, so perhaps they're just better at this. Either way battery capacity will hold them back for a decade.
The investments we're seeing in batteries (LG, Philips, Tesla, VW) are 10x+ what Toyota is doing. I don't see how this results in Toyota able to ship cars in volume as the transition to electric accelerates.
I don’t mean that one or the other is harder, just that doing both takes longer. If Toyota has a battery pack design and factory layout their happy with then they can “just” copy it which saves time over designing the equipment then factory and then building it.
As to your 10+x comment that’s very true today, but Toyota isn’t selling any EV’s. It’s perfectly reasonable for them to have a conservative adoption curve right now rather than assuming their going to sell 10m EV’s in 8 years and then potentially massively over build capacity. This is especially true if their aiming for true mainstream cars without significant markup to justify more risky investments.
You can't respond to sales if you don't have a product that you can sell.
> Assuming they produce a desirable EV they could still ramp up production well past that by 2030.
Sure that goes for every car company. There is no way current plans of Toyota will stand. However they will still be massively behind the curve.
It takes years for the supply chain to develop to build 1 million EVs. Battery factories, lithium production, cobalt mining, cathode/anode production all need to scale and there is increasing competition and very limited human resources.
Its not so easy to 'just' throw up 50GWh of battery output if in 2026 you decide you want more cars 2030.
And if Toyota is last to market with good products and last to realize they need to massively increase production goals it not hard to see how it could be to late.
For comparison Tesla started construing of their Nevada factory in June 2014, it began production in 2016 and was producing 20GWh in 2018. That’s the equivalent of 2026 to 2030.
Toyota has been manufacturing lithium ion car batteries since the 97 Prius, and plug in hybrid since 2012. So, I suspect they can ramp up at least that fast if not faster. Will they is of course a completely different story, they aren’t making great EV’s even if they have the expertise and technology to do so.
> A Prius' battery consists of 28 Panasonic nickel-metal hydride modules.
Toyota is not producing its own batteries anyway.
And the battery manufacturing plant is not actually the biggest difficulty. The problem is that every battery produce has multiple partners and are already scaling as fast as they can and are already oversubscribed.
The same goes for lithium and other materials producers. The amount of battery factories in planning or being built is outstripping the amount of lithium, graphite projects being in development and the amount of materials production.
Of course you can increase above your initial planning, but for Toyota to remain in the same leadership position it would have to in 2025 say 'we are gone 5-10x' our plans. And that is certainty not easy to do.
> A Prius' battery consists of 28 Panasonic nickel-metal hydride modules.
Tesla‘s 2021 Model 3’s are still using Panasonic cells. It’s a partnership where Panasonic brings the IP and expertise and the other party brings giant piles of money.
Not sure what your point is, you said something that was simply wrong. Like, literally a factual error and I pointed that out. Not sure what counterpoint you are trying to make.
And btw, this is also wrong, Tesla 2021 Model 3 uses different cells depending on where they built and at what trim. They can be from CATL, Panasonic or LG.
Its double wrong in claiming that Modern Tesla is simply using Panasonic cells and they just showed up with money. Tesla and Panasonic built up a lot of expertise together, and the 2170 cells with the specific chemistry being produced in Nevada is cooperation between the companies. The idea that Tesla showed up with money and Panasonic did literally everything is nonsense.
Tesla since then of course has spend many billions investing in internal battery expertise, including supply chain, materials and designing their own cells (their own cathode and anode chemistry) and their own battery manufacturing plant.
So on the one hand you have Toyota buying mostly non-lithium ion cells from Panasonic, on the other you have Tesla who is starting to produce its very own cells from its own factories.
Toyota could ramp up faster because they had the money but over the next 5-10 years you have literally every company trying to do that and being last with the smallest plan is clearly not the position you want to start .
Second that timeline from 2016 to 2018 was Panasonic cells.
To be clear Tesla does employ battery experts directly and invests serious money into R&D, however that’s really just a pile of money for the time period I was talking about without Panasonic. Anyone can try and kick things off from scratch, without the IP and technical expertise from Panasonic Tesla wouldn’t have had those kinds of turnaround times.
As to everyone kicking things off yea, but Toyota is already spending ~10 billion on battery manufacturing over the next 8 years. It’s very different to ramp that up than simply starting from scratch.
If they aren't serious about EVs, why would they do this? I honestly don't understand Toyota and Honda here. Something is causing them to fight EVs and push for Hydrogen. Patents? Geopolitics? Existing supply chain and manufacturing processes?
I love the Japanese, but there is a culture of deference that cuts both ways. In the right circumstances you get consistent high quality from a master that knows what he's doing and eager proteges trying their best to head their every word. In the wrong circumstances it leads to Fukushima.
Say what you will about Americans, this is not their way. Musk was wrong about the vertical doors and over automation and his team kept screaming at him until he didn't just relent he frequently brings it up in interviews as an area where he messed up.
The flip side is that for years Japanese automotive manufacturers prized engineering graduates as managers and beat the pants off of over financialized leadership at GM and Ford.
What's relevant is the scale of production, that's what it helps shed light on. Toyota is a behemoth in terms of industrial size and output, and extraordinarily profitable for an automaker (meaning they have ridiculous financial resources to push toward battery production). And over there is little 'ol Tesla's rapidly expanding battery output; a company that as recently as 2017 had 5% the sales of Toyota. It reveals that Toyota clearly still isn't serious about EVs, or they'd be a lot more serious about battery production.
What is Toyota producing batteries for? Vehicles. What is Tesla producing batteries for? Vehicles, charging network, home storage, business storage, small grid storage, large scale grid storage, and probably other things. Tesla is shooting to become an energy company that maybe still makes cars while Toyota is an automotive manufacturer with no known intentions of getting into energy. Comparing the two based on batteries produced is like comparing a banana to an iPhone.
Cars are the overwhelming majority of batteries produced. Supercharging doesn't need batteries.
I don't have exact number but my guess is that of all Tesla consumed batteries 80-90% is far cars.
So even if you take a much more absurdly optimistic assumptions, the announced package for Toyota is only 1-2 million cars. That is 20% of their output in cars today.
They're still not serious about EV's.
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2021/09/toyota-finally-gets-ser...