Toyota-Panasonic’s Battery Venture Looking for New Coastal Site
- Prime Plant mulling new battery plant in Japan: President Koga
- Japan trails China, South Korea in manufacture of EV batteries
Photographer: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg
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Prime Planet Energy & Solutions Inc., the battery joint venture of Toyota Motor Corp. and Panasonic Holdings Corp., is searching for a new domestic manufacturing site with sea port and clean energy access as it expands to keep up with consumer demand for electric vehicles, President Hiroaki Koda said in an interview in Tokyo.
The company, which formally started operations in 2020, also plans to pare production costs by adopting Toyota’s so-called kaizen process of increasing productivity via tiny, continuous improvements as it takes on bigger battery making rivals around the region.