Toyota’s first wholly-owned electric Lexus plant in China could be larger than Tesla’s Shanghai Gigafactory, according to since-deleted publicly available documents shared by a Chinese blogger, revealing significant details on the latest investment in China by the world’s biggest automaker.
Chinese blogger “This is Jinshan” (这里是金山, our translation) on Wednesday shared online a post initially published last November by Shanghai’s Jinshan district government. It says the Shanghai government would be allocating 113 hectares to “a new energy vehicle and cutting-edge battery manufacturing project” at the High-tech Industrial Development Zone in the district, likely for Toyota’s Shanghai facility.
This would make the project larger than Tesla’s Shanghai Gigafactory in the city’s Lingang New Area. The US automaker in late 2018 secured an 86-hectare piece of land to build the first phase of its first overseas factory with an initial capacity of 250,000 cars per year. Toyota’s new factory is said to be minutes away from a railway station in Jinshan, the district branding itself as “Shanghai’s Bay Area.”
TechNode cannot verify the authenticity of the report.
The news comes days after Toyota appointed Li Hui, formerly the executive vice general manager of Lexus China, as its first Chinese general manager of Toyota China in the hopes of driving the initiative and defending its share of the market. The Japanese auto giant had been in negotiation with Shanghai authorities for tax breaks and land grants similar to those received by Tesla, Bloomberg reported last June.
Toyota on Wednesday officially announced it will establish a wholly owned entity in Shanghai through which it could start making electric cars locally for its premium Lexus brand with an initial production capacity of about 100,000 units per year from 2027. The Japanese automaker added that it aims to make the project “an industry benchmark” for carbon neutrality in a partnership with the Shanghai municipal government, according to a Chinese statement (our translation). It pledged to create 1,000 new jobs in the initial phase.
Tesla in 2019 began operating China’s first completely foreign-owned car factory in Shanghai, a year after the central government scrapped the foreign ownership caps for utility and new energy vehicles. Beijing later removed all restrictions for foreign investment in the auto sector in 2022, reported CGTN. Toyota has been running two 50-50 China manufacturing joint ventures with state-owned carmakers FAW and GAC for more than two decades, while developing EVs with BYD for several years, as well as sourcing batteries from the Shenzhen-based company.
The Shanghai Commerce Commission said (in Chinese) on Wednesday it will make efforts to create a market-oriented, law-based, and internationalized first-class business environment, help enterprises solve practical problems, and provide higher-quality, efficient, and targeted services for foreign enterprises willing to invest and develop in the city.
