Although Toyota led the world in hybrid electrics Mr. Toyoda and his lieutenants were reluctant to swing their massive resources into a full commitment. The cited serious issues: availability of battery metals and woefully lacking electrical generating capacity being the two most mentioned, and even got into a hissing contest with Elon Musk because they were experimenting with hydrogen fuel cell technologies.
But something changed and I'm not sure what it was. They are still pursuing fuel cells but in the last week the Government of Japan and the company have used some very big numbers.
Two from Reuters via Mining.com, both August 31:
Japan calls for $24 billion investment to boost battery competitiveness
Japan needs over $24 billion in investment from both the public and private sectors to develop a competitive manufacturing base for batteries used in areas such as electric vehicles (EVs) and energy storage, the industry ministry said on Wednesday.
A specialist panel tasked with formulating battery strategy also set a target of securing 30,000 trained workers for battery manufacturing and supply chains by 2030, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry said.
The final strategy is central to Japanese efforts to reinvigorate its battery industry as government-backed rivals from neighboring China and South Korea expand market share in lithium-ion batteries at the expense of Japanese companies.
“The government will be in the forefront and mobilize all its measures to achieve the strategy’s goals, but we can’t achieve this goal without the efforts of the private sector,” said industry minister Yasutoshi Nishimura at the end of a panel meeting, calling for close cooperation.
The panel has already set targets for a domestic production capacity of EV and energy storage batteries at 150-gigawatt hours (GWh) by 2030, and a global capacity of Japanese makers at 600 GWh. It has also called for full-scale commercialization of all-solid-state batteries by around 2030.
It added to those April-announced targets on Wednesday with the recruitment and 3.4 trillion yen ($24.55 billion) investment goals....
....MUCH MORE
If interested see also June 7 on battery electric vehicles:
"Toyota’s Skunkworks Chief “Incredibly Optimistic” on Climate"
....For Toyota, we’ve announced that 35 percent of our production is going to be BEVs within the next eight years—by 2030. This is incredibly fast and a very, very high percentage of our production, but it’s not 100 percent. So what’s the other 65 percent going to be? When we look at the actual impact in terms of lifetime emissions for the entire life cycle of a car, there are other alternatives which are almost as good, but are actually practical sooner. And that includes PHEVs [plug-in hybrid electric vehicles], which have both a battery and an engine in them. They act like a BEV over shorter distances, roughly 40 miles or so for the models we have now. And that means that you get most of the advantages of a BEV, but you’re not as dependent on the charging network for longer trips. Even HEVs [hybrid electric vehicles] have substantial carbon reductions. And then, of course, there are fuel-cell vehicles, too.....
