- Toyota will begin shipping battery packs from its new North Carolina factory in April.
- The facility is the company’s first in-house battery factory outside Japan.
- It will build batteries for electric vehicles, hybrids and plug-in hybrids assembled in North America.
Toyota’s battery manufacturing facility in North Carolina is ready to begin production after a nearly $14 billion investment. This is the Japanese company’s first in-house battery factory outside Japan, and it will start shipping batteries for Toyota and Lexus electrified vehicles in North America in April.
The plant has 14 assembly lines, with 10 dedicated to making modules for electric vehicles (BEVs) and plug-in hybrids (PHEVs), and four for hybrids (HEVs). By 2030, Toyota estimates the total output to climb to 30 gigawatt-hours per year–enough for over 400,000 all-electric cars with a battery capacity of 70 kilowatt-hours.
That’s a significant difference from Toyota’s EV track record so far. Globally, the Japanese automaker sold a smidge under 140,000 EVs last year, with just 18,570 units reaching the United States. Currently, Toyota has just one all-electric car in its portfolio, the BZ4X crossover, but that will change in the coming years as the carmaker wants to launch between five and seven new EVs stateside in the next two years.
To make that happen, it has invested nearly $10 billion to build the battery factory in North Carolina and expand its facility in Georgetown, Kentucky, where assembly of a three-row electric SUV is expected to start this year. That said, the launch of the new EV has reportedly been pushed back to 2026.
Despite having a single all-electric car in its U.S. portfolio–and a slightly lackluster one at that–customers proved that they want a Toyota-branded EV. Even though it clocked in fewer than 20,000 sales last year, the BZ4X’s numbers doubled last year compared to 2023, so the company must be doing something right.
Labeled as a laggard in the EV game, and for good reason, Toyota might see all the pieces fall into place at exactly the right time. Last year, EV sales in the United States reached a new record and they’re expected to reach new heights this year, so Toyota’s plan to launch an all-new lineup of EVs stateside could prove a winner–both for consumers and the company.
