Toyota

This week was one for Toyota to celebrate. Not only did it officiate the opening of a new battery plant in North Carolina that will serve up cells for hybrids and battery-electric vehicles, but it also picked the time to announce an all new investment into its U.S. manufacturing arm.

Billions more are being poured into Stateside manufacturing. According to Toyota, it’s a strategic long-term bet on the need for domestic manufacturing—but there are a few hidden secret benefits that position Toyota very well back on its home turf, too.

Welcome back to Critical Materials, your daily roundup for all things electric and tech in the automotive space. Also on deck: BMW’s use for AI is growing and Rivian’s partnership with VW could soon spill over to its gas cars. Let’s jump in.

30%: Toyota Will Sink $10 Billion Into U.S. Manufacturing

Photo by: Toyota

Toyota is investing a whopping $10 billion into its U.S. manufacturing footprint. The automaker announced its investment into “future mobility efforts” as it celebrated the opening of its new battery plant in Liberty, North Carolina.

And, sure, while popular U.S.-market models like the Camry, Corolla Cross and RAV4 hybrids will all benefit from the battery factory, there’s another more subtle reason for the investment. No, it’s not the unannounced electrified three-row that Toyota still plans to pencil into its lineup (although I guess that technically is part of it)—it’s that Toyota’s investment could turn the U.S. into a manufacturing hub for its market back home.

Automotive News explains:

Late last month during a visit to a U.S. naval base in Japan, President Donald Trump said that Toyota was preparing to invest $10 billion to build “auto plants all over” the United States.

At the Japan Mobility Show, which coincided with Trump’s remarks, a Toyota Motor Corp. spokesperson said Chairman Akio Toyoda met Trump at a dinner for business leaders. However, the spokesperson said Trump and Toyoda talked only general economic and industry topics, not specifics about investing in the U.S.

Toyota did say at the time that it “plans to export its U.S.-made vehicles to Japan and open its distribution platform in Japan to U.S. automakers, as a result of Japan’s commitment to accept for sale in Japan U.S. manufactured and U.S. safety-certified vehicles without additional testing.”

What Toyota hasn’t said is what projects it plans to use that $10 billion for, or what models are on its export radar. Toyota’s lineup does have some overlap in both markets—think the bZ, Corolla, Crown, Highlander, Prius, Rav4 and a few other models. Given that the automaker has been committed to its “multi-pathway” approach to electrification, it could be anything from a new BEV, to a hybrid or even a full on gas car. Given that Japan’s consumption of BEVs is relatively low compared to other heavy car markets, it might be a fair assumption 

It’s worth calling out that Toyota’s battery plant is absolutely massive. Its 14 production lines will pump out batteries for mild and plug-in hybrids, as well as the mysterious unnamed BEV. All of them will be getting Liberty-grade electrons. But it gives a glimpse into Toyota doing electrification its way: slow and steady.

60%: Xiaomi Wait Times Plummet—But It’s Not Why You Think

Photo by: Motor1.com

Suspicions have been mounting after wait times for the Xiaomi SU7’s electric sedan dropped from 30 weeks down to just 6. The reason? Well, no official answer exists, however, speculation from analysts is that Xiaomi is good at scaling production. Really good.

New reporting from CNEV Post of a note from Goldman Sachs flagged the automaker’s recent efforts to bolster production as the reason for an 80% reduction in delivery time. Their logic is that that factory has finally just caught up the demand (mostly) as the brand is committed to making sure that as many cars hit the road this year as possible.

CNEV Post tells us the forecast from Goldman Sachs:

“We believe the shortened waiting time for SU7 Pro/Max demonstrates Xiaomi’s consistent execution in ramping up manufacturing capabilities, and echoes our earlier view that the tax subsidies announced on Oct 24 reflect Xiaomi’s confidence in manufacturing capacity ramp-up,” wrote Goldman Sachs analyst Timothy Zhao’s team in a research note yesterday.

The team noted that SU7 new order volume has been softening recently which helps digest the order backlog, and expected Xiaomi’s capacity expansion plans to achieve further official progress in the coming months.

With a 6 week wait, the backlog clearly hasn’t let up entirely. But it’s important to recognize that production capacity is finally starting to get to a point that makes China’s Xiaomi-crazed market tenable.

Xiaomi said earlier this year that it was planning to double its output of SU7s in 2025—it sold 135,000 last year. Xiaomi is estimated to have delivered more than 100,000 vehicles in Q3, bringing its total annual sales to more than 257,000 units. Earlier this year, the rapid growth and sales success led Xiaomi’s CEO Lei Jun to raise its delivery target to between 300,000 and 350,000 vehicles, or over 250% of its 2024 EV sales figure.

Meanwhile, the automaker surpassed Tesla in sales volume in China last month and is eyeing up expansion into global markets. If this trend (and demand) continues, Xiaomi’s automotive unit could be headed for profitability earlier than anybody expected.

90%: Rivian’s Partnership With VW Could Extend To Gas Cars

Photo by: InsideEVs

Volkswagen has spent the last half-decade wrestling with software problems a la its Cariad spin-off. But now, the Germans have a renewed lift into what makes a car’s software good—and you can thank Rivian for that.

Rivian entered the chat bringing with a modern, cohesive vehicle architecture that powers its own cars. But CEO RJ Scaringe has another agenda that could make it billions. By becoming a whitebox manufacturer, the startup knows that it could make the software underpinnings for the entire industry. And with VW’s funding, it might be able to do exactly that.

VW announced last year that it would inject a whopping $5.8 billion into a partnership in order to lean on Rivian’s Software-Defined Vehicle platform. The effort was launched as an EV-first venture, but it’s been quietly mutating into something bigger. Maybe much bigger.

Reuters reports on recent statements from the joint venture that hints at what could be coming:

The German automaker is counting on its partnership with Rivian to accelerate development of a scalable, next-generation vehicle platform and close the gap with rivals like Tesla and Chinese rivals.

“For sure, it is an extremely capable architecture and we could allow for future use to also use it for ICE, but as we already outlined our clear focus is on BEV implementation and whatever comes after that is to be decided at a later stage,” Carsten Helbing, co-CEO of the joint venture RV Tech, said.

[…]

“The architecture is highly capable of also driving additional drivetrain configurations. So we do not see a huge issue there, but of course it’s additional work on the component side and on the platform side,” Helbing told Reuters.

In case it wasn’t obvious, the JV’s words mean VW’s next-gen combustion cars could eventually end up on the same underlying software architecture that its EVs will ride on.

The first car launching with the joint venture’s software is the Volkswagen ID.Every1 (don’t worry, that’s not its final name). That rollout begins in 2027, but the juicy bit is what comes next. First are other EVs built on its Scalable Systems Platform, but maybe—just maybe—ICE cars could follow.

100%: Should Tesla Get Into The White-Lable game?

Photo by: Tesla

With Rivian and Lucid both aiming to be the suppliers supplying the electrified automotive industry, it’s almost a surprise that Tesla—the OG in the EV game—hasn’t gone down the same road. Now, sure, it’s open-sourced the NACS standard so other automakers can make use of its Supercharging network and has talked about licensing its Full Self-Driving software to other automakers, but that’s the extent of what we’ve seen so far.

Tesla happens to be extremely good at software. In fact, one of the hardest things about shopping around for another EV and leaving the Tesla ecosystem is deciding just where you want to compromise in the software world. Is it partial autonomy? An app that just works? An intuitive, quick UI? No other automaker has seemed to nail EV software quite like Tesla.

That being said, is Tesla missing out here? And would other automakers benefit from this? Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

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