Toyota and Panasonic Battery Joint Venture are considering building a new plant in Japan

CTOnews.com, Nov. 21-Hiroaki Koda, president of Prime Planet Energy Solutions, a battery joint venture between Toyota Motor and Panasonic Holdings, said in an interview in Tokyo on Monday that the company is looking for a new domestic production base with seaports and clean energy supply channels to meet consumer demand for electric vehicles.

The company officially opened in 2020 and plans to cut production costs by adopting what Toyota calls an improved process. At this stage, when the price of raw materials is soaring, reducing costs and making more power batteries is the key to Prime Planet.

CTOnews.com learned that Toyota has pledged to invest about 4 trillion yen (203.2 billion yuan) to electrify its product line.

Toyota said in August that it would invest up to $5.6 billion to increase battery production for electric vehicles in Japan and the United States. Prime Planet currently makes electric car batteries at a factory in the coastal city of Jilu west of Tokyo. However, Koda declined to disclose further the potential location of the new production site.

Koda says Prime Planet plans to cut costs by 60 per cent by 2025 (compared with 2020).

He said there was more room for cost cuts and Prime Planet was working to shorten delivery times. "We need to improve our competitiveness and offer lower prices because batteries still account for a large part of electric vehicles," he said.