Hiroaki Koda, president of Prime Planet Energy Solutions, a battery joint venture between Toyota Motor and Panasonic Holdings, said in an interview in Tokyo on Monday that the company was looking for a new facility with a seaport and access to clean energy supplies. Domestic production base to meet consumer demand for electric vehicles.
The company, which officially began operations in 2020, also plans to cut production costs by adopting what Toyota calls improved processes. In the case of soaring raw material prices at this stage, reducing costs and manufacturing more power batteries are the key to Prime Planet.
Toyota has committed to invest about 4 trillion yen (about 203.2 billion yuan) to realize the electrification of its product range.
Toyota said in August it would invest as much as $5.6 billion to boost the production of electric vehicle batteries in Japan and the United States. Prime Planet currently produces EV batteries at a factory in Himeji, a coastal city west of Tokyo. However, Koda declined to further disclose the location of the potential new production base.
Koda says Prime Planet plans to cut costs by 60% by 2025 (compared to 2020).
There is room for more cost-cutting, and Prime Planet is working to shorten lead times, he said. “We need to improve our competitiveness and offer lower prices because batteries still make up a large proportion of electric vehicles.”
