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> Toyota is going to respond to actual sales You can't respond to sales if you don't have a product that you can sell. > Assuming they produce a desirable E

> Toyota is going to respond to actual sales 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.

Retric 5y ago
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.
- panick21 5y ago
  > 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.
  - Retric 5y ago
    > 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.
    - panick21 5y ago
      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 .
      - Retric 5y ago
        First the Plug in Prius was using Lithium ion back in 2010 page 1: https://techinfo.toyota.com/techInfoPortal/staticcontent/en/techinfo/html/prelogin/docs/priusphvdisman.pdf https://techinfo.toyota.com/techInfoPortal/staticcontent/en/... Non plug in hybrids want different battery chemistry as the charge / discharge cycles are much more frequent. 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.

Retric 5y ago

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.

panick21 5y ago
> 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.
- Retric 5y ago
  > 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.
  - panick21 5y ago
    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 .
    - Retric 5y ago
      First the Plug in Prius was using Lithium ion back in 2010 page 1: https://techinfo.toyota.com/techInfoPortal/staticcontent/en/techinfo/html/prelogin/docs/priusphvdisman.pdf https://techinfo.toyota.com/techInfoPortal/staticcontent/en/... Non plug in hybrids want different battery chemistry as the charge / discharge cycles are much more frequent. 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.