A large chunk of that money will go toward the batteries themselves, with the Japanese company committing another half trillion yen ($4.4 billion) to the technology on top of 1.5 trillion yen ($13.2 billion) previously announced.
The automaker currently sells just a few thousand battery electric vehicles each year. But it now plans to roll out as many as 30 new models by 2030, with the aim of selling 3.5 million such vehicles per year by 2030, Toyota President Akio Toyoda said at a press briefing in Tokyo.
The Lexus luxury brand is a huge part of the new plan, with Toyota projecting 1 million global EV sales by 2030. Toyota wants all Lexus sales in Europe, North America and China to be battery-powered electric vehicles by the end of this decade, and globally by 2035.
Catching up
In the early 2000s, one of Toyota’s most recognizable hybrids, the Prius, was received with the sort of excitement and wait lists now seen for Tesla models. Other automakers were criticized for not making similar models at the time.
Almost 20 years after the sensation, however, it is Toyota that is playing catchup in fully-electric cars and SUVs.
Standing in front of more than a dozen electric vehicles on Tuesday, Toyoda called the new lineup “our showroom of the future” and said the manufacturer would also seek to make its factories carbon neutral by 2035.
“The future that we showed you today is by no means far away,” Toyoda told reporters, adding that most of the models shown Tuesday would be released over the next few years.
Red-hot demand
EV batteries are also becoming a hot topic among investors elsewhere in Asia.
The market debut, which is expected to take place in January, would be the country’s biggest initial public offering on record, according to Dealogic.
In a statement, LG Energy Solution CEO Young Soo Kwon said that the company’s IPO was about “preemptively responding to the demand for the lithium-ion battery industry, expected to see rapid growth.”
— Peter Valdes-Dapena contributed to this report.