Toyota to build EV battery plant for Lexus cars, Nikkei reports

TOKYO (Reuters) -Japan's Toyota Motor plans to build a battery plant for electric vehicles in the southwestern prefecture of Fukuoka and supply its batteries to a factory that makes luxury Lexus brand cars, the Nikkei business daily reported on Friday.

The world's top-selling automaker would seek to make the island of Kyushu where Fukuoka is located a central part of its supply chain for battery-powered vehicles and an export base for Asia, the newspaper said.

A Toyota spokesperson said the company was aware of the report, but that it was not something it had announced. Toyota has been taking various initiatives to strengthen its EV battery production capacity, the spokesperson added.

Toyota makes Lexus vehicles at the Miyata plant of its subsidiary Toyota Motor Kyushu.

The automaker has previously said it will introduce EVs employing next-generation batteries globally from 2026, manufactured by its EV-focused unit BEV Factory.

The company is targeting sales of 3.5 million EVs annually by 2030, with just under half of those made by the BEV Factory unit. It sold 104,000 EVs in 2023.

The amount Toyota would spend on the battery plant and the start date for its construction have yet to be finalised, according to Nikkei, which did not say where it got the information.

The newspaper said the plant will be operated by Primearth EV Energy, another Toyota subsidiary that specialises in making batteries for hybrids, plug-in hybrids and purely battery-powered vehicles.

(Reporting by Daniel Leussink, Maki Shiraki and Kaori Kaneko; Editing by Clarence Fernandez and Jamie Freed)