Its goals include producing some 2 million electric vehicles a year by 2030, aiming to gain share in the fast-growing market for electric vehicles, led by Tesla, while Japanese automakers risk falling behind European and US rivals.
It is also considering a separate joint venture company for battery production there, aside from its GM partnership. "This puts them in good company with a lot of other makers that have made big battery announcements ... ultimately the world is going to leave internal combustion engines behind," said Christopher Richter, an analyst at CLSA.The bulk of the 8-trillion-yen investment is earmarked for electrification and software technologies. That includes about 43 billion yen on a demonstration line for production of solid-state batteries, targeted to start in spring 2024.