Toyota And BYD joint venture for EV mobility

Toyota Motors and Chinese electric car maker BYD have announced a joint venture to develop battery-powered vehicles. This is keeping in line with the global automotive trends of having joint ventures where manufacturers are coming together and pooling resources to reduce the high R&D costs that companies have to incurre to come up with new technology platforms. This joint venture hopes to tackle the high demand for electric vehicles in the Chinese domestic market. The new company will be called BYD Toyota EV technology Co Ltd.

The company will be based with its headquarters in Pingshan, Shenzhen province that has come to be known as the Silicon Valley of China with a lot of tech start-ups and EV companies emerging from this region. The joint venture will be headed by Hirohisa Kishi who comes from Toyota along with Zhao Binggen who leads BYD as its CEO. Both companies have an equal 50 per cent stake in this new venture.

In the statement issued by the company they look to tackle problems like the widespread adoption of electric cars and improving the required infrastructure that is needed to support them at the same time improving the environment in China. BYD also has other electric ventures that are linked with other automotive brands like Denza and Daimler AG / Mercedes-Benz. Both companies share a similar goal and are determined to share expertise from each other. We will have to wait and see what this mean for Toyota in India if we get access to some of these new products that are in the pipeline from this new joint venture?