Toyota’s new EV strategy? If it can’t beat China, it’s teaming up instead
You know how the old saying goes: “If you can’t beat them, join them.” Well, Toyota’s new strategy is just that — it’s teaming up with China to lower costs for its upcoming EV models.
Toyota’s new EV strategy will use China to cut costs
The world’s largest automaker will tap into China to gain an edge in the global market. Toyota is already sourcing parts from Chinese suppliers to build EVs overseas.
According to Nikkei, Toyota is expanding the use of parts and other EV components from Chinese suppliers for its production base in Thailand.
The facility is Toyota’s largest production hub in Southeast Asia. Japanese brands have historically dominated vehicle sales in the region. However, low-priced EVs from Chinese brands, such as BYD, are quickly winning over buyers with more advanced tech and features.
In Thailand, Japanese brands have accounted for roughly 90% of new vehicle sales. In the first five months of 2025, Japan’s market share dropped to just 71%. Meanwhile, Chinese brands saw their share rise to 16%.
Several sources note that Toyota has already begun sourcing EV components from China to use at its Thailand facility.
Toyota plans to launch more affordable electric vehicles at the hub as early as 2028. According to the company, it plans to reduce costs by about 30% by sourcing parts from China.
By using local suppliers, Toyota has already sparked hope in China with new EVs, like the bZ3X, seeing strong initial demand. Starting at just 109,800 yuan ($15,000), Toyota’s electric SUV was the best-selling foreign brand EV in China in May, its second month on the market.
A Toyota executive confirmed (via 36kr) that “we also plan to develop electric vehicles with lower costs by making the most of parts from Chinese manufacturers, just like the bZ3X” in Southeast Asia.
The bZ3X is produced by Toyota’s joint venture, GAC-Toyota. It’s about the size of a Tesla Model Y, but half the cost in China.
During its EV Tech Day event in June, the company announced new partnerships with “car industry bigwigs,” like Xiaomi, Momenta, and Huawei.
Toyota also broke ground on a new EV plant in China for its luxury Lexus brand last month. It’s the second wholly owned auto plant in China from a foreign automaker, following Tesla.
Electrek’s Take
Can Toyota compete with China using parts sourced from the country? It will help, as shown with the bZ3X. However, with Chinese brands like BYD producing everything in-house, including the batteries, it will still likely have the advantage.
Toyota is promising to launch a series of lower-cost, more efficient EV batteries, but that could still be a few years out.
With the new US tariffs on imports from Japan, Toyota is doubling down on local production to minimize costs. It also opened its first overseas battery plant in North Carolina earlier this year, which will power Toyota’s EVs, HEVs, and PHEVs in North America.
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Elon wants the US military to start buying Tesla Cybertrucks – and now they are! The Air Force has ordered two Cybertruck testers for target practice to determine how easy they are to blow up, while Jo makes up a whole new conspiracy theory on today’s explosive episode of Quick Charge!
Today’s episode is brought to you by retrospec—makers of sleek, powerful e-bikes and outdoor gear built for everyday adventure. Electrek listeners can get 10% off their next ride until August 14 with the exclusive code ELECTREK10 only at retrospec.com.
An it doesn’t stop there. We’ve also got exciting new home battery backup and V2X options for Tesla owners, and one Texas EV driver that decided to conquer the Texas floodwaters by harnessing the awesome combined powers of electrons and stupidity (it’s pretty awesome).
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Tesla’s Dojo supercomputer project is reportedly over. Bloomberg reports that CEO Elon Musk is killing the project after a mass exodus of talent from the Dojo team to a competing startup.
Dojo was the name of Tesla’s in-house AI chip development to create supercomputers to train its AI models for self-driving.
Tesla hired a bunch of top chip architects and tried to develop better AI accelerator chips to rely less on companies like NVIDIA, AMD, and others.
It has been running into delays for years.
We previously reported on significant setbacks. In 2018, Jim Keller, the famed chip architect who was first hired to lead Tesla’s chip-making effort, left the company.
Ganesh Venkataramanan succeeded him, but he left Tesla in 2023.
For the last few years, Peter Bannon, who worked with Keller for years, has been leading Tesla’s chip-making programs, but he is now reportedly also leaving the automaker.
Bloomberg reports that Musk has “ordered the effort to be shut down.”:
Peter Bannon, who was heading up Dojo, is leaving and Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk has ordered the effort to be shut down, according to the people, who asked not to be identified discussing internal matters. The team has lost about 20 workers recently to newly formed DensityAI, and remaining Dojo workers are being reassigned to other data center and compute projects within Tesla, the people said.
DensityAI is a new startup currently in stealth mode, founded by several former Tesla employees, including Venkataramanan.
It reportedly plans to build chips for AI data centers and robots, much like the Dojo program.
The company recently hired 20 former Tesla employees who worked on Dojo.
While the program appeared to be lagging behind for years as Tesla increasingly bought more compute power from NVIDIA, Musk has been claiming progress.
The CEO said in June:
Tesla Dojo AI training computer making progress. We start bringing Dojo 2 online later this year. It takes three major iterations for a new technology to be great. Dojo 2 is good, but Dojo 3 will be great.
During Tesla’s quarterly conference call in late July, the CEO claimed that Dojo 2 will be “operating at scale sometime next year.”
Electrek’s Take
It’s unclear whether the report is accurate or if it’s an extrapolation from the talent exodus to Elon killing Dojo, or if Elon was lying just a few weeks ago.
Alternatively, this development may be so recent that Elon went from being confident in Dojo a few weeks ago to disbanding the team working on it now.
Either way, I think it’s clear that the project has been lagging, and Tesla has been extremely dependent on chip suppliers rather than making its own.
I think Dojo being likely dead is not a big loss for Tesla.
When it comes to chip making, developing its own inference compute for onboard “AI computers” was always the more important project.
TSMC is set to produce Tesla’s new AI5 chip, which is coming soon, and we have recently learned that Samsung will be manufacturing its AI6 chip.
I think the bigger concern from this report is that it’s the latest example of an ongoing exodus of talent at Tesla.
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Jack Dorsey, co-founder and chief executive officer of Twitter Inc. and Square Inc., listens during the Bitcoin 2021 conference in Miami, Florida, on Friday, June 4, 2021.
Eva Marie Uzcategui | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Block shares jumped in extended trading on Thursday after the fintech company increased its forecast for the year.
Here is how the company did, compared to analysts’ consensus estimates from LSEG.
- Earnings per share: 62 cents adjusted vs. 69 cents expected
Block doesn’t report a revenue figure, but said gross profit rose 14% from a year earlier to $2.54 billion, beating analysts’ estimates of $2.46 billion for the quarter. Gross payment volume increased 10% to $64.25 billion.
Block raised its guidance for full-year gross profit to $10.17 billion, representing 14% growth from a year earlier. In its prior earnings report, Block said gross profit for the year would come in at $9.96 billion.
The company expects full-year adjusted operating income of $2.03 billion, or a 20% margin. For the third quarter, the company expects gross profit to grow 16% from a year ago to $2.6 billion, with an operating margin of 18%.
Square payment volume in the quarter grew 10% from a year earlier.
Block faces growing competition from rivals such as Toast and Fiserv‘s Clover, though its Square business still gained share during the quarter in areas such as retail and food and beverage.
Block shares were down 10% this year as of Thursday’s close, while the Nasdaq is up 10%. Last month, Block was added to the S&P 500.
— CNBC’s Robert Hum contributed to this report.
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