Toyota’s stock skyrocketed on Thursday to an 11-month high and posted its best single-week gain in 14 years, after the Japanese auto behemoth unveiled plans for its next generation of electric vehicles to compete with other automakers amid a surge in EV production.
Toyota's stock posted its best week in 14 years.
Shares of Toyota Motor Corp jumped 1.75% to $168.44 as of 3 p.m. Thursday, its highest share price since May 2022, and nearly 13% higher than a week ago ($146.86).
Toyota’s stock boost marks its best week since 2009, as the automaker announced a new generation of EVs it boasts will have a 620-mile range and faster charging times and as it unveils plans to open a $50 million electric vehicle battery facility in 2025.
Those EVs, which it plans to launch in 2026, will include so-called solid-state batteries, a lighter and higher energy density battery that the company says will come at a lower cost to motorists than lithium-ion batteries.
It also comes as shareholders overwhelmingly voted down a push from a group of investors at its annual meeting for new company leadership, after some investors criticized the company’s roll-out of EVs as too slow to meet an array of climate goals—shareholders re-elected to its board of directors Akio Toyoda, who has taken a more balanced approach to EVs.
Toyota’s embrace of EVs comes as billionaire Elon Musk announces a series of partnerships between his electric automaker Tesla and automakers General Motors and Ford, giving the Michigan auto giants access to Tesla’s growing EV charging network. Tesla, whose stock has rebounded substantially since taking a dip late last year, has roughly 17,000 supercharger stations in the U.S., and leads both Ford and GM in EV sales, with 160,000 units last quarter.
Toyota, which led the way in the development of hybrid vehicles with its launch of the Prius in 1997 in Japan and worldwide in 2000, has trailed Tesla in the push to EVs, remaining skeptical of the technology even as many of its competitors pivoted toward electric cars. Last year, it produced roughly 54,000 electric vehicles, ahead of Ford (37,000), Volkswagen (46,000) and Stellantis (52,000), but a drop in the bucket of Tesla’s 339,000. Toyota has since come around to EV production, announcing a “BEV” factory in May to develop and produce batteries for electric vehicles ahead of a planned full lineup of electric cars in 2026.