Toyota is remaking its EV factories in 6 radical steps

TOYOTA CITY — Toyota may be late to the electric vehicle race. But the world's biggest automaker is embarking on an urgent and radical reboot of its famed production machine that executives say will help it leapfrog Tesla and other rivals in just a few short years.

The overhaul hinges on a host of breakthrough technologies that are firmly rooted in its stalwart Toyota Production System but turbocharged with digital tools for the EV era.

The approach — which includes cars that drive themselves through plants, hyperautomated factories, the use of giga-casting techniques and far fewer workers — isn't just happy talk.

Toyota Motor Corp.'s production engineers are implementing the techniques in test bed factories across the company's Toyota City stronghold in Japan's industrial heartland.

The pace of change is picking up as Toyota rushes to ready the manufacturing makeover for a new generation of Tesla-fighting EVs it promises to start delivering in 2026.

To prove it's serious, Toyota hosted a two-day tour of the sites in September, offering an unprecedented peek behind the curtain. From Chief Production Officer Kazuaki Shingo down, the message was loud and clear: Toyota is getting its groove back.

"We have been late in starting the progress, but we hope to leapfrog ahead of Tesla this way," said Akihisa Shirao, project general manager of Toyota's newly established BEV Factory, a business unit set up to spearhead the next-gen EV strategy.

Toyota executives say the high-stakes transformation is as revolutionary as the shift to unibody from body-on-frame vehicles decades ago. And the automaker's success is anything but guaranteed.

Even for a production-proud company such as Toyota, rolling out largely untested factory technologies promises to be a delicate, problem-prone task. And as Toyota improves its processes, its international competitors will be plowing ahead with their own innovations as well.

Nevertheless, Toyota has high hopes for its remake.

The company expects to halve production lead time and reduce equipment costs by 25 percent through digitalization. And on its new dedicated EV lines, Toyota predicts productivity will double.

Meanwhile, planners reckon a new modular EV architecture will require half the investment and development resources, while the vehicles double their range, thanks to better batteries. Of the 3.5 million EVs Toyota aims to sell in 2030, some 1.7 million will be next-gen EVs built this way.

"I'm going to utilize Toyota's skill to change the future of car making," pledged Kazuaki, who was tapped this year by newly appointed CEO Koji Sato to lead global production.

"Sometimes, we might have to destroy the conventional way of production."

There are no official names for what Toyota will call its next-generation EVs. The first market appearance will be a nameplate under the Lexus premium brand in 2026.

The following steps, for a hypothetical car called the Toyobev, show how the changes may unfold.

Before Toyota can produce the Toyobev, it needs to build the lines and machines to make it.

Enter the use of digital-twin technology. This high-powered software allows engineers to speed the creation, testing and verification of new line designs by creating a virtual-world doppelgänger. Toyota says this allows the company to halve mass-production preparation lead times by improving the accuracy of reproducing line layouts to 1-millimeter precision.

Engineers use a wall-size video screen to interact with these 3D digital models of possible line designs that are overlaid onto existing factory floors. The life-size models are twirled, tweaked and repositioned. Then, engineers don virtual reality goggles and head into a green room where they roam this digital landscape and try their hand at assembling mock-ups of components.

Before, Toyota had to set up equipment on the floor and make it fit together in a glorified trial-and-error method. Now, they do it with a 90 percent reduction in rework. This halves the time needed to retool a new vehicle line and cuts equipment costs by a quarter.

Engineers also leverage digital tools to automate jobs previously done by humans. They look to the example of Toyota's Teiho machining plant. Engineers there modeled worker movements of loading jigs into a cutting machine. They replicated it with a robotic arm that can work all night and on holidays. The workers who used to hand-feed the machines are retrained in these new digital planning tools.

By adopting these measures, Toyota hopes to triple the productivity of machining at its plants.

The Toyobev takes shape through a breakthrough casting process that slashes process time and the number of components needing assembly. Using massive die-casting machines, Toyota forms the vehicle's basic architecture in just three big modules: the front, middle and rear.

The approach, called giga casting, was pioneered by Tesla and is now being adopted by others, including Volvo. Toyota is verifying it on reworked sections of the Toyota bZ4X electric crossover at its Myochi casting plant with a 4,000-ton behemoth from Japanese press maker Ube Corp.

The under-rear section of the bZ4X, for example, is a complex amalgam of 86 parts that are manufactured through 33 processes. But Myochi's giga-casting press forms the same module as one piece from one process, saving stamping time and assembly complexity.

The process has high upfront costs because of the giant machines. But Toyota ekes additional savings through a proprietary technology that slashes the die-changing process to a 20-minute turnaround from an ordeal that used to last up to 24 hours.

At a Myochi demo, the giant die-caster clamps shut with a flutter of buzzing, whirring and shuddering sounds as molten aluminum is injected into the mold at 1,292 degrees Fahrenheit and flash-cooled with water to 482 degrees Fahrenheit in a matter of seconds.

The press then clanks open with a giant plume of steam as a Fanuc robot reaches in to clutch the finished underbody module and pull it out. The machine can churn out a module every 150 seconds or so, and Toyota wants to speed that up to one part every 100 seconds.

The company thinks it can improve casting productivity by 20 percent through giga casting. But its engineers caution that there is still a lot of work to do before mass production can begin. For now, Toyota has only one giga press. Not only will it likely need more machines by 2026, it may need to scale up to bigger ones.

Now that the Toyobev's front, middle and rear modules have been cast, it's time to ready the advanced batteries that will go under the floor. Here at clean rooms in the Teiho plant, Toyota is prototyping and developing the cells and packs that will power the next-gen EVs.

The first of these is a bipolar lithium iron phosphate battery that arrives around 2026 or 2027. Bipolar batteries boost power density by combining anode and cathode terminals into the same current collector. Anodes and cathodes normally have their own collectors.

This battery's range will exceed 373 miles, a 20 percent gain over today's bZ4X lithium ion battery, while reducing its cost by 40 percent thanks to less expensive chemistry.

Toyota will begin output of the bipolar cells on a demonstration line next year.

Teiho also is the site for developing Toyota's upcoming solid-state batteries. The first of two versions will arrive around 2027 to 2028. Toyota targets a range of more than 621 miles, and the battery should recharge in about 10 minutes. Cost is still to be determined.

When it comes to solid-state batteries, the trick will be stacking the layers of cathode-anode cells precisely and at high speeds. When affixing two layers as they spin off rollers, it is difficult to get them to line up exactly. But using its expertise in karakuri, a kind of mechanical manufacturing gadgetry that doesn't use electricity, Toyota says it was able to overcome the problem of synchronizing the stacking.

Toyota engineers say they have cracked the code of solid-state battery materials. The next challenge will be speeding up output while maintaining quality and safety, they say.

With the battery tucked under the middle section of the Toyobev's three giga-cast modules, the next-gen EV now heads into the body and paint shops.

With the Toyobev broken into three sections, workers gain easy 360-degree access to install parts and components before the modules are joined.

Toyota's engineers say they are still debating the best way to connect them.

In today's factories, the skeletal steel vehicle bodies run a gantlet of welding robots that shower sparks in all directions. But that won't work for the new modular method.

That is partly because there is a fire concern with the battery on board. But also, the modules at this stage are expected to be already outfitted with plastic interior trim, steering wheels, tires and other finishing flourishes that the engineers don't want damaged by welding debris.

So instead of welds, they are considering bolts, adhesives or flow-drill screw fasteners.

The exterior body paneling will probably be aluminum or resin, engineers said.

If resin, Toyota has pioneered a way of achieving a high-gloss, paint-like finish without actually needing to paint. The process involves hand-polishing the metal molds to a perfect mirror luster. It takes teams of two to three people working in two shifts over two weeks to get the polish just right. But when black resin is poured into the mold, it comes out looking like a shiny black piano. Toyota will use the technique in the upcoming Crown Sport.

When it comes to real painting, Toyota plans a dramatically downsized process.

A new booth, introduced by Toyota at a Chinese plant last year, is 60 percent smaller in volume than the company's traditional setup. That allows a 15 percent reduction in paint usage and 10 percent cost reduction, plus a 17 percent decrease in carbon dioxide emissions, engineers reckoned.

Now the Toyobev enters perhaps the most radical area of Toyota's future factory — what the automaker calls the self-propelled assembly line. The idea is to ditch costly, inflexible anchored assembly lines.

Instead, Toyota wants its battery-powered cars to drive themselves through the plant.

A demonstration line at Toyota's Motomachi assembly plant shows how it could unfold.

The car rolls down the factory floor using a radio signal-controlled technology, similar to that used in a remote-controlled toy car. This can be done indoors because EVs emit no noxious fumes.

Camera and lidar sensors installed along the factory's pillars keep the car on track and clear of workers. The steering wheel eerily rotates back and forth by itself as the car inches along at just 0.22 mph. That yields a plant takt time of one car a minute.

Don't expect a lot of two-legged employees milling about. Automated robot forklifts and Roomba-like automated pallets shuttle parts to the passing cars from nearby storage. And advanced robots will take over human final assembly tasks such as installing seats.

The goal is having enough space and flexibility to let the cars drive closer to the parts racks for shorter shuttle times.

Overall, Toyota expects to halve investment because there will be no fixed conveyors or pit lines hauling cars through the factory. The process will also reduce the required amount of labor per vehicle. And it will allow for more compact layouts and more flexible parts storage. Toyota says it could save hundreds of millions of dollars in plant investment just by ditching the conveyors.

"There is a wide scope for improvement in this area," one production engineer said.

The finished Toyobev now drives itself right out of the factory and into the parking yard outside. Because there is no human driver who needs space to open a door, the cars can park extremely close together, saving valuable space.

The robotic driving addresses two challenges confronting automakers in Japan. The first is an increasingly chronic labor shortage amid an aging population. The other is a labor law taking effect next year that restricts the work hours of such drivers.

Once the parked cars are ready to be loaded onto car carriers, a fleet of newly developed Vehicle Logistics Robots move them to the loading area.

These boxy self-guided haulers have adjustable cargo beds that slide under a car like a spatula to lift it up and carry it.

Before, workers would log about 5 miles a day crisscrossing the yard, picking up cars and driving them onto the trucks. Now, humans will still drive onto the trucks, but the logistics robots eliminate all that walking time by bringing the cars straight to the dock.

At the Motomachi yard, where Toyota began trials of the technology this year, the company wants to eventually supplant the lot's 22 human workers with 10 robots, managers said.

Toyota executives are betting their vision for this factory of tomorrow will help keep the carmaker's next-gen EVs cost competitive and at the front of the pack in an uncertain new era.

"We have a long history of success," Takahiro Imura, chief officer of Toyota's production group, told Automotive News. "This can be both a strength and a weakness.

"It is sometimes difficult to have a breakthrough. But we like to say that in times of a pinch, there also comes an opportunity. This is a big turning point in our competitiveness."