Toyota Vows to Start Producing EVs in the United States by 2025
Toyota is going to dramatically ramp up EV production and they will be making a big investment in the United States.
Well, that didn’t take long. A couple weeks ago we reported that Akio Toyota was stepping down as president of Toyota. One of the main reasons for his departure was his reluctance to embrace all-electric vehicles. Then just last week the new head of Toyota, Koji Sato, announced that the future of Lexus and Toyota will revolve around electrification. And now we learn that Toyota is planning on building EVs in the United States beginning in 2025. And by 2026 they have a goal of producing 1 million EVs worldwide. This is an abrupt change in direction in EV plans for the world’s top-selling automaker.
The news first broke on Nikkei Asia and was then picked up by YouTuber Kirk Kreifels. In the video Kreifels breaks down the details of the announcement. He also speculates which all-electric vehicles we may see first. And in other news, remember that steering yoke thing that Tesla uses in some models and just about everyone hates? Well, we have an update on the Lexus version of that steering yoke thing as well.
Summer of 2025 EV Goals
The largest Toyota plant in the world is located in Kentucky. And it is in that plant that Toyota expects to begin building EVs by the summer of 2025. Around the same time Toyota is expected to open a battery plant in North Carolina. Toyota is expected to invest approximately $6.7 billion in Japan and the U.S. to manufacture batteries. Toyota’s global battery production by 2030 is projected to be 280 GWh. Remember 1 GWh can in theory produce enough batteries to power roughly 15,000 EVs. That would be over 4 million EVs annually by 2030. However, that is a longer term goal. Starting in 2026 Toyota is planning on producing about 200,000 EVs in the U.S. each year.
What Are They Building?
So, you may be wondering what EVs Toyota plans to build here. And the unsurprising answer is SUVs. Initially the target will be to produce about 1,000 EVs per month and then ramp that up to 10,000 units per month by the end of 2025. That will be a massive step forward in the production of EVs for Toyota. In 2022 Toyota only produced 24,000 EVs worldwide. For comparison’s sake, Tesla produced 1.31 million in the same time period. What are the first EV SUVs we can expect to see being built in the U.S.? The BZ Compact SUV is likely to be one of the first. It is a smaller version of the bZ4X. A three row EV crossover is also expected. And there will likely be a Toyota and a Lexus version of that.
Lexus Isn’t Yoking
In other news there is an update on that Lexus steering yoke. Lexus is saying that the steering yoke will not be ready until at least 2025. We can’t say we are upset about the delay. In fact, we are a bit relieved. The steering yoke is the answer to a question nobody asked. It has been a source of complaints with Tesla ever since they unveiled their version. The Lexus version is supposed to be far more refined. And that is typical of Lexus, they will not released something that is only half-baked. But if you were excited to have yoke steering in your Lexus, you are going to have to stay patient. Watch the video below for all the details on the EV announcement and the steering yoke.
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