Toyota expanding hybrid car battery plant with $193 million infusion

May 23, 2008   by Jozef Winter

Like the news from Toyota wasn’t good enough today, with their announcement of having sold over 1 million of their Prius hybrid car, the company has just said that their joint venture with Matsushita Electric, Panasonic EV Energy Co., in investing an additional $193 million (20 billion yen) in their existing facilities and for the construction of 2 nickel-hydride battery plants, raising their production capacity to about 1 million batteries a year by 2011; double what it is now.

This follows Toyota’s plan to bring up its sales of hybrids to over 1 million a year by 2010, and with their current track record, this isn’t a difficult target to meet. Back in December Toyota said it was looking at the possibilities of mass production of lithium-ion batteries with Matsushita Electric, which would replace the nickel-hydrides currently in use in their Prius, and it has also been rumored that with the expansion of their current plants, that they will be setting up a lithium-ion battery operation, to be running by 2010, though a representative commented that no decision has yet been made.

This is good news for Nissan, which has yet to develop their own hybrid system for commercial sale, but has announced that its joint venture with NEC Corp will start mass-producing lithium-ion batteries, superior in many ways to nickel-hydride, in 2009, an eagerly anticipated project, which will help set the prices and efficiencies of hybrid and electric vehicles to come.

via physorg