Toyota Motor Corp. confirmed it will plow as much as $10 billion into the U.S. over the next five years to boost its local operations, less than a month after President Trump flagged that the Japanese carmaker planned such an investment.<\/p>\n
The announcement clears up a confusing moment from Trump\u2019s visit to Tokyo last month, when he said Toyota would build plants all over the U.S. \u201cto the tune of over $10 billion.\u201d At the time, the automaker wouldn\u2019t confirm such a plan, calling it mere speculation. <\/p>\n
The automaker provided no further details on how it will spend the funds. David Christ, Toyota\u2019s U.S. sales chief, said that will be revealed at a later date. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll announce the investment plans for the $10 billion as we get closer to making the investments,\u201d Christ told reporters Wednesday at a ceremony for a new battery plant in North Carolina.<\/p>\n
The investment announcement comes as the Trump administration pressures the global auto industry to shift more production to the U.S. and imposed punitive tariffs on many car parts and vehicles sourced from abroad. <\/p>\n
Toyota\u2019s top executive in the U.S., Ted Ogawa, said the battery plant and new investment \u201cmarks a pivotal moment in our company\u2019s history.\u201d<\/p>\n
The president called out Toyota by name earlier this year for importing too many vehicles from Japan to the U.S., and also singled it out during this first administration for building up manufacturing operations in Mexico.<\/p>\n
In an attempt to blunt that earlier criticism, Toyota promised in 2017 to invest $13 billion in U.S. manufacturing. The company said earlier this year that it had spent those funds and that its total investment in the U.S. currently exceeds $50 billion \u2014 spread over nearly seven decades. <\/p>\n
The Japanese company imported about half of the vehicles it sold in the U.S. last year, mostly from Canada and Mexico but also including some 281,000 vehicles made in Japan. <\/p>\n
The latest investment commitment was timed to coincide with the official opening of Toyota\u2019s newest plant, a lithium-ion battery manufacturing facility located near Greensboro, N.C. <\/p>\n
Construction of the factory in the rural town of Liberty cost $13.9 billion and production is expected to slowly ramp up over the next decade. Toyota said it will create 5,100 new jobs and supply both hybrid gas-electric and all-electric models.<\/p>\n
Swift about-face<\/p>\n
When Toyota first announced the U.S. battery plant project in 2021, it envisioned a steady rise in Americans\u2019 demand for EVs due in part to then-President Biden\u2019s efforts to speed adoption of zero-emission vehicles with favorable policies. <\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s return to the White House has led to a swift about-face in federal emissions regulations, including the abandonment of incentives for EV buyers such as a $7,500 tax credit. <\/p>\n
Toyota has four lines currently producing batteries for hybrids, which at full capacity can supply up to 600,000 gas-electric vehicles. Those will be installed in models such as the Camry mid-size sedan and hybrid versions of the Corolla Cross crossover and best-selling RAV4 compact SUV.<\/p>\n
Three more lines will be added next year, one dedicated to batteries for 45,000 all-electric vehicles a year and two that can make batteries for an additional 74,000 fully electric or plug-in hybrid vehicles, Anne Souder, a plant general manager, told reporters at a briefing.<\/p>\n
The carmaker aims for a total of 14 lines to be operational by 2034, but its decision to scale back ambitious plans to sell as many as seven EV models in the U.S. has injected uncertainty into Toyota\u2019s plans for production of all-electric vehicle batteries. <\/p>\n
\u201cWith the regulation changes, it\u2019s changed a little bit,\u201d Don Stewart, president of the battery plant, told reporters.<\/p>\n
Demand for EVs is expected to soften, and BloombergNEF now forecasts a major surplus in U.S. battery cell manufacturing capacity by 2030. That\u2019s largely due to a 14-million-unit downward revision in projected U.S. sales of EVs by then. <\/p>\n
The carmaker delivered fewer than 30,000 all-electric vehicles in the U.S. in 2024, even as its sales of hybrid gas-electrics have skyrocketed. <\/p>\n
Dawson writes for Bloomberg. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Toyota Motor Corp. confirmed it will plow as much as $10 billion into the U.S. over the next…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":53371,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[33648,1804,31475,5180,33647,21023,131,133,132,33645,33644,3230,33646,23630,1519,1181,178,72],"class_list":["post-53370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-all-electric-vehicle","tag-company","tag-ev","tag-investment","tag-japanese-carmaker","tag-line","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news","tag-more-production","tag-new-battery-plant","tag-plan","tag-reporter-wednesday","tag-toyota","tag-trump","tag-us","tag-vehicle","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53370"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53370\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}