BYD and Toyota have established a 50/50 joint venture to conduct R&D for battery-electric vehicles (BEVs). The new company will be headquartered in Shenzhen City, is expected to have around 300 employees, and is to begin operations in May 2020.
“With the engineers from BYD and Toyota working together
under the same roof, we aim to develop BEVs that are superior in performance
and meet the needs of customers in China by merging the two companies’
strengths and also through friendly rivalry,” said Hirohisa Kishi, Chairman of
the new company.
Toyota is the
world’s largest automaker by most measures, but it’s arguably the one that is
the farthest behind when it comes to e-mobility. So a collaboration with BYD, a forward-looking company that
was the world’s largest producer of EVs until Tesla stole the crown, would seem
to be a very promising development.
Before you get too excited about this news, however,
consider that Toyota’s plans to develop BEVs are probably only directly
relevant to the Chinese market. The Japanese automaker already uses BYD (and
another Chinese battery-maker, CATL) as a battery supplier. In recent years, it
has made
noises about accelerating its electrification plans, but has yet to
announce any pure EVs for Europe or the US.
Source: Electric Vehicles Magazine
