Toyota, FAW start building NEV plant in Tianjin

China-Japan automotive manufacturer Tianjin FAW Toyota Motor has started building a new energy vehicle (NEV) plant in north China's Tianjin city, with production scheduled to start in June 2022.

The joint venture between Japanese automaker Toyota Motor and Chinese carmaker FAW will invest $1.22bn to build the plant. It will have a capacity of 200,000 units/yr for new energy passenger vehicles, including fuel-cell vehicles, all-electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid vehicles. The firm first revealed the plan in March.

FAW Toyota's auto sales rose by 12pc from a year earlier to 225,000 units during the second quarter of this year, in response to rising demand for private cars as people sought to avoid using public transport amid Covid-19 infection fears.

FAW Toyota has three production bases in Tianjin, Changchun city in northeast China's Jilin province and Chengdu city in southwest China's Sichuan province.

The new plant will double the firm's capacity in Tianjin to 400,000 units/yr. The Changchun facility has a designed capacity of 200,000 units/yr. The Chengdu plant, which has a capacity of 5,000 units/yr, is also building production lines with a combined capacity of 100,000 units/yr for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles.

The growth in China's auto production is expected to support demand for light metals including aluminium, magnesium and silicon, as well as for battery metals such as cobalt, lithium and nickel.