Toyota signs joint venture deal with large Chinese battery and EV manufacturer
The joint venture research and development company will work on designing and developing battery electric vehicles (BEVs) and their related parts (including vehicle platform). The company is to be established in China in 2020, with staffing to come from existing R&D engineers within the respective companies.
On the establishment of the new company, BYD senior vice president Lian Yu-bo said:
“We aim to combine BYD’s strengths in development and competitiveness in the battery electric vehicle market with Toyota’s quality and safety technology to provide the best BEV products for the market demand and consumer affection as early as we can.”
“With the same goal to further promote the widespread use of electrified vehicles, we appreciate that BYD and Toyota can become “teammates”, able to put aside our rivalry and collaborate. We hope to further advance and expand both BYD and Toyota from the efforts of the new company with BYD.”
What is does mark for Toyota is an expansion into the Chinese BEV market, where the results of the joint venture will be sold.
However, the R&D learnings will also be able to flow into the rest of Toyota’s, where adoption (or even support for) BEVs has been until now best described as ‘less than enthusiastic’.
Going by the comments above from Shigeki Terashi, this finally appears to be changing.
For those unfamiliar with BYD (which is most people as their biggest market is in China) – it was initially founded in 1995 as a battery business.
It has subsequently expanded into manufacturing electric bicycles, forklifts, rechargeable batteries, as well as full battery, plug-in, hybrid and internal combustion engined cars, buses, and trucks.
Bryce Gaton is an expert on electric vehicles and contributor for The Driven and Renew Economy.
He has been working in the EV sector for 10 years, and also is editor
of the Australian Electric Vehicle Association newsletter.
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