Skip to main content

Toyota Chases Tesla and Aims for Supremacy


From the series The world car battle


On September 6th, Toyota, the world's largest car manufacturer, an nounced a revised target of building I million electric vehicles by 2026, lowering its previous goal by 1.5 million, according to Automotive News.

Difficulties of the electric sector

A key driver behind the energy transition, particularly as regards vehicle electrification, is that countries which lack oil and natural gas resources need to reduce their reliance on regions prone to political instability and conflict. China has taken on the challenge of large-scale electrification, even though the electric car was pioneered by US manufacturers like Tesla and the Franco-Japanese Renault-Nissan alliance. Other nations have followed suit out of necessity. By focusing solely on environmental concerns, without factoring in China’s role, it is impossible to understand the impetus behind the global energy transition.

The challenges involved in the transition are enormous, but the intensifying global competition between major powers, particularly with the historically unprecedented rise of a power with the dimensions of China, is driving it forward. This has forced both the EU and the US to change course in their economic policy, with their political powers making dirigiste decisions. In its Electrit Vebicle Outlook 2024 report, BloombergNEF revised its forecasts for battery electric vehicle sales through 2026, with China continu ing to lead in electric car production, battery manufacturing, and the global supply chain for essential raw materi als and components [June 12th]. The challenge from Chinese electrification remains ever-present, and, despite its obstacles, the trend towards electrification is irreversible.

Volkswagen’s current difficulties slot into this broader context, with Ford, General Motors, Stellantis, and other car manufacturers also reassessing their electric vehicle ambitions in recent months. Even Volvo has postponed its goal of ending the production of combustion engine cars by the end of 2030 Automotive News, September 12th). In light of BloombergNEF’s assessments, it is worth examining Toyota’s strategy.

Toyota’s multi-pathway approach

On June 13th, 2023, Toyota Motor Corporation held a “Toyota Technical Workshop” in Toyota City, Japan, with the theme “Let’s Change the Future of Cars”. In the field of electrification, Toyota has adopted a “multi-pathway” strategy to avoid the “pioneer’s trap” [Internationalism, October 2024]. Unlike Volkswagen and Volvo, which have committed to going fully electric, Toyota has opted for a more diversified approach. While battery-only electric vehicles (BEVS) will be introduced, they will not replace internal combustion engine, hybrid, and hydrogen-powered cars. This decision reflects Toyota’s great confidence in its industrial and finan cial resources. A key goal will be to bring the production costs of electric vehicles in line with those of internal combustion engine cars. To achieve this, the company plans to focus not only on reducing battery costs, bur also on improving the manufacturing process of electric vehicles.

Takero Kato, president of the BEV Factory which will produce Toyota’s battery-powered cars, outlined the company’s strategy of combining next-generation vehicles with solid-state batteries, which are expected to give BEVs a range of 1,000 km by 2028, together with the transformation of production processes. Unfortunately, we do not have detailed information on how the production processes are organised within Chinese automobile companies, particularly at BYD.

From books and newspapers, we have more information about Tovo ta, although this should be taken with a grain of salt, as many announcements contain a propagandistic component aimed at influencing inf stock market prices. The study of production processes in the automotive industry brings us in line with Karl Marx’s description in “Machinery and Modern Industry” [Capital, Vol. 1, Chapter 15].

In his analysis of heavy industry, Marx delves into the core of productive operations that generate wealth. It is within the factory that production costs — and ultimately, the final price — are determined. This is where we must begin, even before the end product, to understand where the crux of competition lies between large automobile companies during this phase of vehicle electrification.

Toyota’s new mode of production

In the planned Toyota plant for producing electric cars, the vehicle underbody will be divided into three sections (modules): front, middle, and rear, each with its own parts (see diagram). This approach allows for unprecedented labour efficiency, as workers no longer have to climb inside the vehicles during assembly. Tesla is trying to do the same.

This innovation will allow seats and other components to be fitted before the roof and side panels are fixed, simplifying the entire process and improving the efficiency of robots and equipment. Once the parts are assembled on each module and the three sections are completed and joined together, the car can proceed autonomously to finish the assembly. In this innovative self-propelled production line, the electric vehicles are guided by sensors and operate without a driver.

Toyota will also introduce “gigacasting”, the use of a giant press pioneered by Tesla [Internationalism, December 2023]. Its adoption will lead to a significant reduction in vehicle development costs and capital expenditure. The self-propelled production technology will cut the number of processes and investment costs by half. Vehicle development time will be reduced to 20 months, compared to the current average of 30. In the past, Toyota revolutionised modern production with its lean, just-in-time production system. Since then, its methods have been adopted worldwide, from hospitals to software companies, and have been studied extensively in business schools and boardrooms. However, in the realm of battery-powered electric vehicles, the Japanese manufacturer has been overtaken by Tesla.

Toyota executives not only claim that they will catch up, but also aim to achieve a leading position in the sector with their next generation of electric vehicles, set to debut in 2026. The company plans to sell 3.5 million electric vehicles annually by 2030, which would represent 30% of its total production. In an interview this year with the Japanese newspaper Nikkei, Honda Motor Co. CEO Toshihiro Mibe spoke about the “Tesla shock” affecting the entire automotive industry. Sandy Munro, CEO of Munro & Associates (Michigan), which specialises in vehicle dismantling and consulting on improvements for car manufacturers, stated that many of Toyota’s new production ideas mirror those developed by Tesla.

Toyota’s new approach will be embodied in its factory for producing battery-powered cars: it will not simply be a physical plant, but an integrated organisation that unites all functions, from design and engineering to production and sales. According to Kato, with the BEV Factory, the future of battery electric vehicles will involve a transformation not only of the product itself, but also of the entire production process. For Conrad Layson, senior alternative propulsion analyst at AutoForecast Solutions, the new factory will position Toyota as one of the leading traditional car manufactur ers in the transition to electric vehicles. The Toyota Production System needed an upgrade, and upgrading production methods is precisely the challenge that all car manufacturers will need to face.

Lotta Comunista, October 2024

Popular posts from this blog

Leapfrogging: The Chinese Auto Industry’s Leap Forward

Internationalism No. 73, March 2025 Page 15 From the series The world car battle It is predicted that next year in China the sales of electrified vehicles (mainly battery-powered or hybrid) will for the first time overtake those of cars with an internal combustion engine. This development will mark a historic about turn which will put the world's biggest auto market years ahead of its Western rivals [Financial Times, December 26th]. Meanwhile, the growth in sales of electric vehicles in Europe and the United States has slowed. BYD's leap forward Another important development in 2024 was the record sales of Chinese brands in China: they rose from 38% of the total in 2020 to 56%, a sign of the maturation of the national auto industry which is now able to challenge the Japanese, American, and European manufacturers. BYD's leap forward is impressive, comparable to that of Ford Motors after the First World War, when with the Model T, introduc...

Cryptocurrencies, Tariffs, Oil and Spending in Trump’s Executive Orders

Internationalism No. 73, March 2025 Page 8 Douglas Irwin, economist and historian of American trade policy, writes for the Peterson Institute that the tariffs announced by Donald Trump, if implemented, would constitute a “historic event in the annals of US trade policy” and “one of the largest increases in trade taxes in US history. One has to go back almost a century to find tariff increases comparable”. Irwin limits himself to providing us with a historical dimension to the planned duties. But the bewilderment and turmoil created, especially among Washington’s allies, derives from the fact that the tariffs being brandished are accompanied by a hail of presidential decrees and declarations that mark a profound political discontinuity, both in the balance of internal institutional powers and in the balance of power between nations. The watershed was expected, but the speed and vehemence of the White House’s assaults are setting the scene for a change of era i...

The Works of Marx and Engels and the Bolshevik Model

Internationalism Pages 12–13 In the autumn of 1895 Lenin commented on the death of Friedrich Engels: "After his friend Karl Marx (who died in 1883), Engels was the finest scholar and teacher of the modern proletariat in the whole civilised world. […] In their scientific works, Marx and Engels were the first to explain that socialism is not the invention of dreamers, but the final aim and necessary result of the development of the productive forces in modern society. All recorded history hitherto has been a history of class struggle, of the succession of the rule and victory of certain social classes over others. And this will continue until the foundations of class struggle and of class domination – private property and anarchic social production – disappear. The interests of the proletariat demand the destruction of these foundations, and therefore the conscious class struggle of the organised workers must be directed against them. And every class strugg...

The Party and the Unprecedented crisis in the World Order: A Crucial Decade

This first quarter-century has seen an epochal turning point in inter-power relations, triggered by China's very rapid imperialist development. Arrigo Cervetto recognised this process from the very early 1990s: Today history has sped up its pace to an unpredictable extent. [...] Analysis of the sixteenth century, as the century of accelerations and rift in world history, is a model for our Marxist vision ( La mezza guerra nel Golfo [The Half War in the Persian Gulf], January 1991). The course of imperialism was speeding up, and China's very rapid rise was opening up a new strategic phase with the new century. The United States, the leading power in the world, is being challenged by an antagonist with comparable economic strength which, moreover, openly states that it wants to provide itself with a "world class" military force within the next decade. Favoured by the 2008 global crisis and also by the pandemic crisis, China has forged ahead with its rapid rise for ...

European Imperialism and Imperialist Scission

Internationalism No. 50, April 2023 Pages 1-2 The postwar vicissitudes of European imperialism - from the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) in 1951 to the Treaty of Rome leading the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1957, and then to the Maastricht Treaty and the European Union in 1992, the euro federation in 1998 and the institutional Treaty of Lisbon in 2007 - provide an exemplary charting of the dialectic of unity and scission of unitary imperialism. The big concentrations of capital, and the powers in their grip, demonstrate the aspect of the unity of the global imperialistic system in its common interest to guarantee the production of surplus value and the conditions for exchange and circulation connected with it, together with the class rule on which it is premised. At the same time, the shares of the world’s social capital and the powers are permanently divided by the scission of the struggle to share out surplus value, markets and sources of ...