Toyota's Balance Sheet Remains a Key Asset in Uncertain Times

Toyota's vision includes making compact cars a priority for emerging markets with attractive design but lower costs, having designers and engineers as equal partners, and scale from the Toyota New Global Architecture, which develops many vehicles using common parts, something critical for Toyota to keep pace with the likes of Volkswagen. A big change on the parts side is that the company uses more parts on a global standard as opposed to Toyota-specific standards. The long-term goal is for vehicles that share a platform to have 70%-80% common parts. We think giving local designers more control is finally letting Toyota make more exciting vehicles. Toyota is thinking about the future with its Monet autonomous vehicle services joint venture with SoftBank and other Japanese automakers, such as Honda, its battery joint venture with Panasonic, and Woven City, a laboratory city of the future in Japan run on hydrogen fuel cells. Toyota is working on solid state batteries and has an JPY 8 trillion electrified vehicle plan (includes hybrids) for 2022-30. The battery joint venture with Panasonic, as well as Toyota mostly on its own, is spending up to JPY 730 billion yen to build 40 GWh capacity in Japan and North Carolina opening between 2024 and 2026.