Toyota could start building electric cars in Kentucky as soon as 2025 by upgrading the existing plant, Nikkei third report.
The move could allow Toyota vehicles to qualify for a $7,500 federal tax credit under new rules, enacted under the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), that require assembly vehicles and battery packs in North America. Toyota previously announced plans to make EV batteries in the US at a new factory in North Carolina by 2025.
Located in Georgetown, Kentucky, the plant that is said to have targeted electric vehicle production opened in 1988. The plant currently produces Camry Hybrid and RAV4 Hybrid models for Toyota’s main brand, as well as other vehicles. Lexus ES sedan and V-6 and inline 4-cylinder engines. Toyota says the plant is currently capable of producing 550,000 vehicles and more than 600,000 engines per year.
2016 Lexus ES made in Georgetown, Kentucky
According to the report, Toyota is also aiming to produce 200,000 electric vehicles in the US from 2026 onwards. According to the report, along with production in Japan, China and India, the automaker is aiming to produce one million electric vehicles globally by that time.
This would be a quick turnaround of course for Toyota. As Nikkei notes, over 9 million Toyota vehicles will be produced by 2022, with just 24,000 being electric. And while Toyota is Japan’s largest automaker, in the electric vehicle sector it is overtaken by Tesla, which sold 1.31 million vehicles globally last year, Nikkei noted.
Toyota changes CEO unlikely to signal a major shift to more electric vehicles, and as recently as last month, the automaker once again laid out its logic behind emphasizing hybrid vehicles. In spite of Toyota Accelerated Battery Plan perhaps the strongest hint that electric vehicle production in the United States is serious. A battery plant under construction in North Carolina originally slated for hybrid battery production is now being expanded by $2.5 billion to accommodate electric vehicle battery production.
2023 Toyota bZ4X Limited AWD
A dedicated EV platform also got the green light, but maybe 5 years from now. Toyota currently has nothing like Hyundai’s E-GMP or Volkswagen MEB Platform Designed for bulk production.
That could mean the first EVs assembled in the US will be conversions of the internal combustion model, or could be built on the same e-TNGA platform as the Toyota BZ4X, Subaru Solterra and Lexus RZ 450e . All three models are geared towards the US, although some tech comes with it, such as rope yokewill not be available at launch.
