Toyota is betting on its new EV technology and old-school thinking to spur the sales. At factories in Japan’s industrial heartland, top selling automaker, Toyota has turned to self-propelled assembly lines, massive die casting and even old-fashioned hand polishing as it aims to make up for lost ground in EV sales.
The world’s top-selling automaker believes it can close the gap with Tesla and others by combining new technology with the famous lean production methods it has used for decades to wring inefficiency, including excess costs, out of manufacturing. This would help in Toyota’s EV sales to shoot up.
Toyota’s EV technology
Giving a glimpse of Toyota’s EV technology, which is latest advances at a plant tour in central Japan last week, some for the first time. It also showed off examples of thrifty ingenuity, such as a technique to make high-gloss bumpers without any paint. The mold is hand polished to a mirror finish, giving the bumper its lustre.
Elsewhere, three-decade-old equipment used to process parts can now be run at night and on weekends after being automated through robotics and 3D modeling, improvements Toyota said had trebled equipment productivity.
“The strength of Toyota’s manufacturing lies in our ability to respond to changing times,” said Chief Product Officer Kazuaki Shingo.
He pointed to Toyota’s EV technology and engineering expertise anchored in “TPS”, shorthand for the Toyota Production System.
Top selling automaker’s advanced manufacturing
Toyota revolutionized modern manufacturing with its system of lean production, just-in-time delivery and “kanban” workflow organization. Its methods have since been adopted everywhere from hospitals to software firms. It is also studied widely in business schools and boardrooms around the world.
The relentless focus on continuous improvement and squeezing costs helped fuel Toyota’s ascent from post-war upstart to global giant. But in battery EVs, it has been eclipsed by another tireless innovator, Tesla, which has used efficiencies of its own to build market-leading profitability.
Ramping Toyota EV production
Under new CEO Koji Sato, in June announced an ambitious plan to ramp up Toyota’s EV production. This is a big shift after years of criticism that the maker of the industry-leading hybrid Prius was slow to embrace fully electric technology.
The top selling automaker accounted for only about 0.3% of the global EV market in 2022, Goldman Sachs said in June, calling a stronger offering the “missing piece” in its lineup.
Toyota’s assembly line
Toyota’s EV technology innovation being emphasized is its self-propelled production lines, where EVs are guided by sensors through the assembly line. The technology removes the need for conveyor equipment, a major expense in the car assembly process, and allows for greater flexibility in production lines.
In a demonstration, EVs inched along without a roof, allowing parts to be slotted in. A Fanuc (6954.T) robot arm lowered cars seats into the EV bed. Nearby, an autonomous forklift took more seats off a container.
Toyota’s gig casting
Toyota also showed off a prototype of the die-casting technology known as “gig casting” pioneered by Tesla. It produces aluminum parts far bigger than anything used before in auto manufacturing.
Like Tesla, Toyota’s EV production will be in modular sections, reducing parts. But it also points to innovations of its own. Since it has been working with die-casting for years, it has developed molds that can be quickly replaced, which is periodically necessary in gig casting.
Toyota says that reduces the time to change the mold to 20 minutes, versus 24 hours normally. It estimates a 20% boost in productivity.
