3rd Expansion of the plant before it starts production. Each announcement has roughly doubled the investment.
That’s a lot of money for a huge amount of battery capacity.
Perhaps Toyota has reconsidered their “hybrid’s first” approach?
This is a massive investment.
There is so much noise and conflicting news around EVs. It’s almost like people and the media shouldn’t be making wild proclamations about the EV market this early in its life.
Planning on pushing their decade old and very profitable PHEV/hybrid cars.
While GM & Ford are pulling back on their EV investments (thanks UAW) this is how Toyota will jumpstart their EV US market presence after their slow start.
I’m not sure if it’s fair to point fingers there, but I see 2 different strategies.
Ford and GM made some lofty promises that they got praised for, but in reality probably couldn’t pull off.
Meanwhile Toyota got a bunch of hate for not doing the same and stuck with a strategy that they could pull off.
If you want to blame anything else I’d blame protectionist politics. The IRA originally was written with breaks for union made products which was eventually modified to be American made or North American made. Toyota in particular does not have a North American battery supply, so this may have delayed some introductions until this plant is running.