Source: Gasgoo
Many environmental critics have attacked Toyota for not doing enough on electrification. However, they ignore the fact that Toyota has made a $13.9 billion investment in this area.
In this tiny village of about 2,100 people just over 20 miles from downtown Greensboro, North Carolina, thousands of construction workers from across the country are building a sprawling, independent industrial park, specializes in manufacturing batteries for Toyota’s future electric vehicles, plug-in hybrids and conventional hybrid vehicles.
It’s a massive undertaking and Toyota’s largest investment in a single region, with multiple buildings currently in various stages of completion, most of which will eventually have 500,000 or 1 million square feet (46,451 to 92,903 square meters) of floor space.
Image source: Toyota
The plant has a total of seven buildings dedicated to the production of batteries, with two production lines planned for each building. Ten of the production lines will produce battery packs for future electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles, and another four will produce battery packs for hybrid vehicles.
Last week, foreign media interviewed Sean Suggs, president of Toyota Battery Manufacturing North Carolina, who talked about the strength of battery production compared to car production. “Because we need to make batteries here, the plant will use six times as much electricity as a normal manufacturing facility,” Suggs said. Suggs’s last position was as head of Toyota’s Mississippi plant, where the Corolla is made.
Whereas traditional car manufacturing relies on moving assembly lines to assemble smaller parts into larger ones, the manufacturing process for batteries and battery packs means the plant will operate more like a specialist supplier.
Lithium, cobalt, magnesium and other vital mineral raw materials will be shipped to the United States from mines around the world. The bulk minerals would be stored outside each battery building and piped inside, where they would be mixed into a purplish-gray slurry.
Mud is applied to an ultra-thin strip of copper, dried and rolled up with an equally thin plastic film partition, and folded into a rectangle the size of a mobile phone, crushed and placed with the electrolyte in a thin metal tank, which is then welded together with exposed electrodes to form each individual prism-shaped battery. The entire battery production process is mainly done by machine in a clean room, with workers wearing protective clothing from head to toe, monitoring and guiding the production process, and taking an air shower upon entry to remove any external contaminants that could contaminate the battery.
According to the needs of the production, the sealed lithium-ion battery cells are assembled into various sizes of battery packs. After the assembly is completed, the staff will charge the battery pack, and then “sit” for a period of time to test it to ensure that each battery is fully functional and can remain charged. Finished battery packs shipped to Toyota’s vehicle manufacturing plants.
The project plans to begin production of the first saleable batteries in the first quarter of 2025 for a three-row electric vehicle assembled in Georgetown, Kentucky. Suggs said the construction of the project will continue until at least late 2027 or early 2028.
