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Toyota to invest $1.3B in Kentucky factory to build battery packs and new EV

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Re: Toyota to invest $1.3B in Kentucky factory to build battery packs and new EV

#91

Post by stetrain »

antisthenes wrote: post #52
brandonagr2 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about Toyota's plans makes you think they will ever catch up to everyone else with EVs?

Toyota has probably shipped more battery capacity in hybrid cars than most EV manufacturers to date. They don't need to catch up to anything.

This might be true cumulatively but certainly isn't true on an annual basis anymore.

If Toyota were shipping the same battery capacity as Tesla they could make every car they sell globally a hybrid or plug-in hybrid and they are at about 30% of that.

Re: Toyota to invest $1.3B in Kentucky factory to build battery packs and new EV

#92

Post by itsoktocry »

brandonagr2 wrote: post #27
itsoktocry wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For context: Tesla is guiding for $10+B a year capex spending for the next 3 years. I know people around these parts think that Tesla has uncovered some magical factory building ability, but can you even consider the fact that maybe Toyota knows what they are doing? > Toyota is still under-investing in EV. $1.3B is nothing. This is one factory.

What about Toyota's plans makes you think they will ever catch up to everyone else with EVs?

>What about Toyota's plans makes you think they will ever catch up to everyone else with EVs?

Their history of engineering and execution.

What makes you think think they can't? EV proponents like to argue that the simplicity is what makes EVs so great, but at the same time making arguments like "no one can catch up".

Believe it or not, it's not a certainty that EVs are going to be the solution, rather than just an improvement on our way to something else.

Re: Toyota to invest $1.3B in Kentucky factory to build battery packs and new EV

#93

Post by stetrain »

josefresco wrote: post #73
antisthenes wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Toyota has probably shipped more battery capacity in hybrid cars than most EV manufacturers to date. They don't need to catch up to anything.

They're still killing it with hybrids and the rest of the industry, having realized that "all electric" is a little too early, is scrambling. The RAV4 is the top selling "SUV" in America(1) and it looks like close to 50% of those are the hybrid model. 1. https://www.caranddriver.com/news/g43553191/bestselling-cars... In 2022 it was 48%: https://evstatistics.com/2022/07/48-of-1h-2022-toyota-rav4-s...

If Toyota shipped the same annual battery capacity as Tesla then they could sell 100% of their vehicles as hybrid or plug-in hybrid instead of 30%.

Re: Toyota to invest $1.3B in Kentucky factory to build battery packs and new EV

#94

Post by enragedcacti »

_ea1k wrote: post #64
bhpm wrote: post #26

I am curious about what vehicles these will be for. When Toyota says “EVs” they often mean hybrids. The article makes this distinction, but Toyota didn’t in any statements.

In the US, some PHEVs with relatively small batteries can qualify for the full $7,500 tax credit. You might be on to something there. It would certainly explain the size of the investment. A $1.3B plant might not build a lot of EVs, but it could build quite a few PHEVs.

Specifically it's 7kWh minimum in addition to all of the other sourcing and assembly requirements. In practice there haven't been any PHEVs with less, the smallest PHEV battery so far in the US is 8kWh in a Ferrari. It'll be interesting to see if more small battery PHEVs come out trying to target HEV price points with the tax credit. It would still be a huge jump up from standard hybrids which as far as I'm aware are rarely more than 1.5kWh.

kWh makes sense if your goal is to stimulate US battery production but I really wish there were an all-electric range requirement, A hypothetical 6.8kWh Prius Prime would get more range that the 21kWh Wrangler 4xe.

https://www.irs.gov/credits-deductions/credits-for-new-clean...

Re: Toyota to invest $1.3B in Kentucky factory to build battery packs and new EV

#95

Post by itsoktocry »

luuurker wrote: post #53
explaininjs wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

Hybrid. I'm nitpicking, but current full electric Toyota cars are not that good or popular.

Electric cars are not that popular, period.

Hybrids may turn out to be a more popular option.

Re: Toyota to invest $1.3B in Kentucky factory to build battery packs and new EV

#96

Post by itsoktocry »

earthwalker99 wrote: post #9
itsoktocry wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ford made these same promises 2 years ago then bailed when the interest rate rose. Sometimes investment makes sense, and then things change and it doesn't make sense anymore. That's fair, isn't it?

Fair? What would that even mean? These empty promises are how we ended up electing Trump the first time and it's virtually guaranteeing that we'll elect him a second time. Rural Kentucky is in horrible shape and a lot of people here were placing hope in this, much like they have so many other empty promises from their leaders, so at least stop acting surprised when the consequences show themselves.

>Fair? What would that even mean?

It means you can't hold it against a company if an investment no longer seems profitable.

Blame your politicians, who feel the need to hold a ribbon cutting ceremony before anything is signed.

Re: Toyota to invest $1.3B in Kentucky factory to build battery packs and new EV

#97

Post by seadan83 »

dmix wrote: post #43
jonnycomputer wrote: post #22

More Biden policy winning back investment in America, is my take. Update: People who may not have been following closely what Biden has accomplished during his Presidency might have questions. In this case, the Inflation Reduction Act specifically has credits to encourage battery manufacture in the US. https://www.orrick.com/en/Insights/2022/11/Section-45X-of-th ... More generally, the IRA and the Infrastructure Inve…

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…

> Or worse wasted a ton of time & money of local govs + small town employees. The Obama admin had a few really bad examples of this.

Indeed. China had even more examples, but overall they found the winners and boosted them. The US instead defunded and now China produces 80% of all solar panels in the world. It's similar for VC firm, for example, they'll invest in 10 companies and expect only a couple to be profitable.

> 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.

Do you have those charts available? I was initially going to give a commendation for pointing out the Trump's administration's role in the Chips act, but... the Chips act was passed in late 2022! "The bill was signed into law by President Joe Biden on August 9, 2022." [1]

What's more, while the CHIPS act was initially bi-partisan, it passed in a relatively partisan vote: "Every senator in the Senate Democratic Caucus except for Bernie Sanders voted in favor of passing the CHIPS Act, and they were joined by seventeen Republican senators" [1]

Bottom line, seems like this bill was presented to Senators* in 2019 and then took time to work its way through Congress. It does not seem the Trump admin had much to do with this (I would more says the CHIPS act was seeded from an initial bipartisan effort that originated in the Senate; there's no mention I see that the executive branch had anything to do with it in 2019; if anything, it seems that congress of 2019 and whatever role the executive had at the time both _failed_ to get the CHIPS act through; it was the next congress that got it done in 2022)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CHIPS_and_Science_Act

* I'm not entirely sure if 'presented' to senators means there was an executive branch role. My reading of the wiki article is that it sounds like the original 2019 bill originated in the Senate. I just don't see anything that mentions the executive's role in 2019 or 2020.

Re: Toyota to invest $1.3B in Kentucky factory to build battery packs and new EV

#98

Post by throwup238 »

belltaco wrote: post #90
throwup238 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Teslas Have a Minor Issue Where the Wheels Fly Off While Driving, Documents Show - https://futurism.com/tesla-flaws-failures-blame-drivers It's really easy to cherry pick problems when someone makes millions of cars every year.

Toyota was forced to recall all their BZX cars for that issue, whereas the scale of the problem you linked appears to be much lower across Tesla's models.

"All their BZX cars" = less than 5,500 cars total. It wasn't just a completely new car model, it was the first one built on Toyota's e-TNGA modular EV platform. The factory line had just barely gotten off the ground.

Toyta sold ten million cars that year so scale wise that doesn't even qualify as a rounding error. The Teslas suspension problems that caused some wheels to fly off effected tens of thousands.

Re: Toyota to invest $1.3B in Kentucky factory to build battery packs and new EV

#99

Post by itsoktocry »

_ea1k wrote: post #66
itsoktocry wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tesla in Sparks NV Ironically, you go to the website and there's a fake image of the factory, based on previous promises. I can't speak to the others, but I'm sure there's some positive outliers!

Why assume they are outliers? It seems like there are more successes than failures, just that the failures get attention.

>Why assume they are outliers?

Because when the government hands tax money over to profitable companies to "create jobs", you are inherently distorting the market.

>It seems like there are more successes than failures

Maybe, but I'm skeptical.

Re: Toyota to invest $1.3B in Kentucky factory to build battery packs and new EV

#100

Post by enragedcacti »

belltaco wrote: post #90
throwup238 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Teslas Have a Minor Issue Where the Wheels Fly Off While Driving, Documents Show - https://futurism.com/tesla-flaws-failures-blame-drivers It's really easy to cherry pick problems when someone makes millions of cars every year.

Toyota was forced to recall all their BZX cars for that issue, whereas the scale of the problem you linked appears to be much lower across Tesla's models.

It was a voluntary recall on an extremely low production vehicle (at least at the time), a total of 260 cars with a potential issue.

Compare that to the tens of thousands of ACTUAL INCIDENTS identified by Reuters through Tesla internal documents and Tesla's refusal to even cover the repairs, let alone proactively recall all potentially affected vehicles. Much of what was covered by Reuter's occurred AFTER China forced a recall for the exact same issues.

https://pressroom.toyota.com/toyota-is-conducting-a-safety-r...

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/tesla-mu...

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