Toyota Australia says BZ4X battery has higher quality, longevity than rivals

Because the February 2024 open date of the Toyota BZ4X electrical midsize SUV attracts nearer, details of the auto’s Australian-market battery occupy been published.

Chasing Autos was invited to tour the Himeji, Japan battery manufacturing facility that will present the nickel-manganese cobalt battery pack for the Australian-spec BZ4X from open.

A used Panasonic tv manufacturing facility, the Himeji plant of Top Planet Energy & Solutions (PPES) was converted to provide beefy-EV batteries at scale in 2019 in a joint endeavor owned 51 percent by Toyota and 49 percent by Panasonic.

Toyota targets 90 percent EV battery lifestyles retention after 10 years

The repurposed plant in southeast Japan continues to ramp up, and its center of attention since its electrode formation, battery assembly and battery formation traces opened in 2021 has been on reaching Toyota’s quality and longevity requirements.

In October 2021, Toyota published an ambitious purpose: that the BZ4X, a Tesla Model Y rival, would have 90 percent of its normal battery ability 10 years after it was built.

Operations on the Himeji plant are calibrated in share to hit this purpose. PPES and Toyota executives are in particular delighted with a 20-day, 11-step charging and rising outdated course of that is the fruits of a battery’s manufacturing lope.

“This contributes to the stabilisation of battery performance,” Top Planet’s Takenori Kimura informed Chasing Autos. “In an preliminary fee section, a chemical response takes place interior the battery. The output following can make a contribution to the longer-time interval longevity of battery lifestyles.”

Contained within the multi-storey Himeji plant, operators supervise machines that coat and tight coil electrodes and combine them into cell banks, before cells are conveyed backward and forward between charging, rising outdated and discharging states for almost about three weeks.

Then, the bedded-in batteries destined for Australian BZ4X customers are ready to be shipped 280km from the Himeji plant to Toyota’s BZ4X manufacturing facility in Aichi, Japan.

Toyota Australia’s vice president of sales and marketing Sean Hanley rapid that strengthening long-time interval battery lifestyles would bolster spotty EV residual values.

“Whereas we face the same residual value challenges as any different BEV producer, we are in a position to be ready to [have a clear view] of the longevity and quality of those batteries, and amortise the value over some time interval. We’ve a official place to delivery.

“No two batteries are the same. The batteries produced right here are a sever above those offered by many others available within the market by manner of quality, performance, safety, and reliability.”

Toyota’s Top Planet battery-making arm space to rival CATL

PPES, led by Toyota archaic executive Hiroaki Koda, has a rising profile interior the wider Toyota community of corporations.

As effectively as working the Himeji plant, PPES has been tasked with converting some existing Toyota engine factories and acquiring fresh providers to enhance Toyota’s rising EV battery requirements. The carmaker plans to trace 3.5 million EVs yearly by 2030.

The rising footprint of PPES presents Toyota with a majority-owned competitor to battery-manufacturing giants like China’s CATL and BYD – despite the proven fact that Toyota is also buying batteries from both of those suppliers to supplement PPES’s output.

The PPES Himeji plant produces batteries for Toyota and different producers in approximately equal measure. Plenty of Toyota-particular battery manufacturing traces at the moment provide batteries for 80,000 BZ4X SUVs per year – about 5.8GWh in ability per Chasing Autos estimates.

Himeji battery plant to double in ability in 2024

Toyota is pouring funding into the Himeji plant to higher than double its ability to provide batteries namely for Toyota EV items, with one other 7GWh ability space to lope online in 2024 – taking whole Toyota battery ability at Himeji to about 13GWh.

That circa-13GWh ability is understood to provider the trace of about 160,000 BZ4X items – averaging 81.2kWh per battery – which could per chance per chance well suggest the BZ4X could per chance per chance well moreover fabricate a longer-vary battery option in future.

PPES says that battery manufacturing at Himeji will “sequentially enlarge” after 2024 – and there looked to be predominant areas of unused space on the plant that ought to permit this to happen.

The BZ4X is Toyota’s first entry into the fully-electrical segment in Australia. It is far a midsize SUV same in dimension to a RAV4, on hand with single- or twin-motor AWD formats basically based round a 72kWh-whole, 64kWh-usable battery.

From its open in Australia, the BZ4X will pack in batteries built from scratch from the PPES Himeji plant, despite the proven fact that different suppliers could per chance per chance well be feeble in future looking on requirements.