$1.3B seems like a lot of money but it isn't for a car factory, especially spread over many years. For context: Tesla is guiding for $10+B a year capex spending for the next 3 years. Nevada factory took $6.2B and Tesla plans to spend additional $3.6B Toyota is still under-investing in EV. $1.3B is nothing. https://www.tesla.com/blog/continuing-our-investment-nevada
As someone who lives a few miles from Georgetown, KY, it's important to note that this factory already exists and sounds like they are (partially) re-tooling it to begin EV production. So that might explain the dollar figure.
US domestic manufacturing became a major theme in the last two prior US elections. If you look at growth charts in US factory capital it started spiking just before the signing of CHIPS act which was pitched to congress in 2019, which was a bipartisan effort seeded from the Trump admin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CHIPS_and_Science_Act And the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act which Biden admin pitched to cong…
Yes, but the CHIPS act was also signed by Biden. I think we can fairly credit him for seeing it through. Trump talked a lot about bringing manufacturing back, but he did not have the self-discipline to actually see any of it through; legislatively, Trump is a master of self-sabotage. But it is true that the CHIP had bipartisan support, but the ones who supported it were not MAGA types, but people like McConnell.
This is just not true. Trumps tariffs have been one of the biggest motivators of reshoring, which started under him. Yes the chips act is also great, there is no need to pretend one guy was useless and the other did all of the work its bipartisan and the two presidents work in this arena has complimented each other.
The fact that they already sell the most popular electric vehicle in the US and Japan, and have done so since they launched the very beginning of electric vehicles, over 25 years ago? (Pruis)
Ignoring that Prius is a hybrid and not an EV: Toyota sold 30k in 2023, the lowest number ever. Tesla sold 400k of Model Y and 210k of Model 3 and 31k of Model X in 2024. So Model Y outsold Prius by 13x in US in 2023. --- https://carfigures.com/us-market-brand/toyota/prius-family https://cleantechnica.com/2024/01/29/tesla-model-ys-huge-gro...
Look at the insanely huge sales of the RAV4 hybrid. Americans don't buy small cars, we buy SUV/CUVs and Toyota is the king.
They don’t need to innovate just execute and Toyota is all about execution. Build a car people want and let sales drive future investments.
Execution like the wheels falling off their flagship all-ev car? After they've been making cars for 85+ years. https://www.carsales.com.au/editorial/details/wheels-falling... https://www.motortrend.com/news/toyotas-fix-bz4x-disconnecti... That doesn't get the headlines and attenion that a icon enlargement software update on Tesla does on HN.
On the bright side, some manufacturing jobs brought state side. On the other hand, it’s in KY. These multibillion dollar deals tend to land in states with the lowest cost of living, non-educated workforce, minimal enforcement/respect of environment (dump waste into rivers), and tend to be subsidized at the state and local levels. Apple opened up shop outside of Austin (ie, not Travis County) because of lower taxes an…
They should unionize. In fact UAW wants to unionize all automakers including Tesla and the ones in the south. They failed in the past but with the downward trajectory of population size, there is a great opportunity here.
Now you might say they will just leave the US and manufacture elsewhere. Well thats where tariffs come in and the UAW is a core voting block so they will have to alter any plans to move to Mexico. Higher inflation will be the result but its probably worth it long term.
Globalization is rolling back. It's about to be boom times in America as long as the politicians from all parties can actually move from one troth to another and actually pass bills.
To be fair Toyota has had local factories for the longest time as part of their JIT manufacturing philosophy.
Globalization is rolling back. It's about to be boom times in America as long as the politicians from all parties can actually move from one troth to another and actually pass bills.
Cars, and EVs in particular have strong protectionist laws in the US that make it more expensive to import vehicles than to build them locally. There are a few other sectors like semiconductor fabs where we have started to introduce protectionist policies but I haven't seen any movement to expand those types of policies to most other manufacturing sectors.
$1.3B seems like a lot of money but it isn't for a car factory, especially spread over many years. For context: Tesla is guiding for $10+B a year capex spending for the next 3 years. Nevada factory took $6.2B and Tesla plans to spend additional $3.6B Toyota is still under-investing in EV. $1.3B is nothing. https://www.tesla.com/blog/continuing-our-investment-nevada
As someone who lives a few miles from Georgetown, KY, it's important to note that this factory already exists and sounds like they are (partially) re-tooling it to begin EV production. So that might explain the dollar figure.
Louisville checking in, spent a lot of time in Georgetown and can confirm this is likely just more work on the Camry plant.
Toyota has been good to the area.
Off topic, but is there a popular tech meetup in the state? Moved back a year and some change ago and would love to get more involved.
Toyota initiated the hybrid as a modern platform, and they continue make the best selling hybrid in the world (Prius). But since they don't want to be in the business of making undesirable vehicles with short lifespans that require expensive maintenance, they have stuck to hybrids rather than full electric and all the extremely costly low lifespan batteries that go into them. Speaking as a 2004 Prius daily driver, th…
You aren't more environmentally friendly, in less than 2 years an EV is net positive https://www.tesla.com/impact (see page 22) And that's not even mentioning that in 20 years we won't be mining materials out of the ground anymore, will just be recycling existing battery materials
1. Conflict of interest. Is there any alternative report?
2. 2 years is vague, do we have it in kms?
3. Which car is it against? How does it compare with Prius 2024?
Also, how much investment in renewables is because of EVs? If we had 0 EVs and same renewables, coal/oil/gas generated electricity would have gone down by what is now consumed by EVs.