from Hacker News

Toyota to invest $1.3B in Kentucky factory to build battery packs and new EV

by clouddrover on 2/7/24, 12:17 PM with 274 comments

• by anonu on 2/7/24, 2:34 PM

  Similarly, Hyundai building $8bn battery plant outside Savannah, Georgia:

  https://apnews.com/article/hyundai-georgia-electric-vehicle-...

• by kjksf on 2/7/24, 2:20 PM

  $1.3B seems like a lot of money but it isn't for a car factory, especially spread over many years.

  For context: Tesla is guiding for $10+B a year capex spending for the next 3 years.

  Nevada factory took $6.2B and Tesla plans to spend additional $3.6B

  Toyota is still under-investing in EV. $1.3B is nothing.

  https://www.tesla.com/blog/continuing-our-investment-nevada

• by sandworm101 on 2/7/24, 7:17 PM

  >> Environmental groups have long criticized Toyota for being slow to move toward fully electric vehicles, instead clinging to gas-electric hybrid technology.

  When you run a company as large and old as Toyota, you always hedge your bets. There are some other options to battery-powered electric vehicles (hydrogen IC). They are currently not as mature but anyone running something as big as Toyota needs to hedge against that sort of outlier tech. If Toyota abandoned IC, got rid of its IC production lines, they would suffer hugely if hydrogen IC one out as the green tech. All the major car companies do such things. That's why they have survived as long as they have.

  Would Tesla survive if a new hydrogen storage killed the market for battery-powered cars? Toyota has seen and survived a few such revolutions.

• by costanzaDynasty on 2/7/24, 3:19 PM

  Globalization is rolling back. It's about to be boom times in America as long as the politicians from all parties can actually move from one troth to another and actually pass bills.

• by ThinkBeat on 2/7/24, 10:04 PM

  This is of course mostly due to the giant US subsidies the federal government is offering citizens now, but the EV must be "built" in the US (Which has some loopholes and strange definitions in it)

  I dont quite understand why the sales of EVs in the US is considered to have flattened out according to some statistics.

• by jonnycomputer on 2/7/24, 3:04 PM

  More Biden policy winning back investment in America, is my take.

  Update:

  People who may not have been following closely what Biden has accomplished during his Presidency might have questions.

  In this case, the Inflation Reduction Act specifically has credits to encourage battery manufacture in the US.

  https://www.orrick.com/en/Insights/2022/11/Section-45X-of-th...

  More generally, the IRA and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and the CHIPS act has encouraged investment in US manufacturing, which is surging.

  https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/industry/manufactur...

• by the_third_wave on 2/7/24, 3:17 PM

  An interesting contrast showed up in my RSS feed regarding this subject:

  First this HN post: Toyota to invest $1.3B in Kentucky factory to build battery packs and new EV

  A few lines below that: Toyota Refused To Hop On The Electric Vehicle Bandwagon, And It Paid Off Big Time [1]

  We'll see where the chips fall but thus far it seems Tesla is one of the few western companies which manages to profitably produce and sell consumer EVs. I suspect Chinese companies like BYD run at a profit as well but it is hard to get access to reliable data. Volkswagen seems to be aiming for 'profit parity for EVs' in 2025 but they seem to have a long way to go [2].

  [1] https://dailycaller.com/2024/02/07/toyota-2023-fiscal-year-3...

  [2] https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/volksw...

• by earthwalker99 on 2/7/24, 2:12 PM

  Ford made these same promises 2 years ago then bailed when the interest rate rose.

• by hintymad on 2/7/24, 7:23 PM

  I was wondering how the manufacturers address the potential culture conflicts. Obama's documentary American Factory revealed two notable contentions. One is that American workers think that the management is too tough on them while the management think that the workers are too unreasonable. The other is that Chinese workers are 30% (or 2X?) more efficient than American workers. I have no judgement on the first contention, but the second worries me. American labors were known to be the best in the world many years ago, and a strong argument against offshoring manufacturing was that Chinese workers were much worse than Americans. Yet the tide has turned.

• by bhpm on 2/7/24, 3:07 PM

  I am curious about what vehicles these will be for. When Toyota says “EVs” they often mean hybrids. The article makes this distinction, but Toyota didn’t in any statements.

• by punkybr3wster on 2/8/24, 7:15 PM

  Why companies put factories in states that actively go against the products they build is mind boggling.

• by Rebelgecko on 2/7/24, 5:09 PM

  Is this to make the solid state batteries that Toyota has been hyping up for a decade?

• by hettygreen on 2/7/24, 11:19 PM

  Are there issues with these factories? environmental? safety?

• by psychlops on 2/7/24, 2:06 PM

  How much does Toyota pay in taxes in Kentucky or are we subsidizing the factory?

• by kyevevevev on 2/7/24, 6:01 PM

  lol #41. Kentucky [0] Percentage of registered vehicles that are electric: 0.06% Total registered electric vehicles: 2,650 (#33 overall) Number of statewide charging stations: 222 (#37 overall) Number of charging ports per 100 EVs: 19.9 (#21 overall)

  [0]https://www _ copilotsearch _ com/posts/states-with-the-most-electric-vehicles/

• by xyst on 2/7/24, 2:53 PM

  On the bright side, some manufacturing jobs brought state side. On the other hand, it’s in KY. These multibillion dollar deals tend to land in states with the lowest cost of living, non-educated workforce, minimal enforcement/respect of environment (dump waste into rivers), and tend to be subsidized at the state and local levels.

  Apple opened up shop outside of Austin (ie, not Travis County) because of lower taxes and more incentives provided by other county. Multi Trillion dollar company by the way. Amazon has been opening up warehouses in the sticks, soaking up all of those incentives from those desperate small towns looking to giveaway the land for a couple of decades in exchange for short term gains (mayor/city council able to say, we brought X jobs to Y town!1). Yet another multibillion company taking advantage of the desperate.

  What do the people get in return? Getting the opportunity to work shit hours in a non-union job. Possibly back breaking work. No investment in their future. Just cogs in the wheel which are completely fungible (broke your back? File a claim with insurance. Fuck off. Deal with it. Not our problem. Then hire the next sucker to replace you. Rinse and repeat)