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As Japanese brands continue to rise in recent years, the Toyota brand still seems to want to continue to expand the layout of the Chinese market, including a number of previously exposed models launched in the Chinese market. Guangzhou Auto Toyota recently sold an industrial land in Nansha, Guangzhou for 919 million yuan, where it will build a fifth production line, the Financial Associated Press reported.

It is understood that the production base is an industrial land of 735000 square meters in Xiaohu Island, Nansha, Guangzhou, with a planned annual production capacity of 200000 vehicles, and the total construction period of the basic supporting project is 1100 calendar days, which means that the production line is expected to be completed and put into production in 2022. Relevant documents show that at present, it has entered the stage of general contract bidding for the survey, design and construction of infrastructure.

In fact, as early as May last year, GAC GROUP (601238.SH), a shareholder of GAC Toyota, issued a "notice on the investment and construction of GAC Toyota and Guangfeng engine projects", mentioning that GAC Toyota's investment in the first and second phase of the new energy vehicle capacity expansion project was recently approved by shareholders of both sides, with a total investment of 11.33 billion yuan.

This also includes that GAC Toyota is planning to build a new energy vehicle production line (the fourth production line) with an annual capacity of 200000 vehicles. According to the documents, the fourth production line of Guangzhou Auto Toyota is scheduled to be completed in September 2020 and put into production in March 2021. The three models planned for the product are all electric vehicles, including the announced C-HR electric version codenamed 711B, an MPV electric car and an SUV electric car.

In addition, FAW Toyota is also planning to build a new energy vehicle plant in Tianjin with an annual capacity of 200000 vehicles. The new plant will cover a complete production process, including batteries, with a total investment of nearly 8.5 billion yuan. According to Tianjin's plan, the project will make progress by the end of this year. Thus it can be seen that Toyota has further accelerated the layout of China's new energy vehicle market.

Although Toyota continues to expand new energy plants in China, Toyota still has relatively few new energy models. Some analysts believe that Toyota gradually began to layout new energy is actually constantly expanding the production capacity of hybrid models, because the current Toyota hybrid products, low capacity, low profits, so the next year or two will be Toyota hybrid growth period.

According to the relevant person in charge of GAC Toyota, GAC Toyota will deepen the hybrid strategy and make every effort to promote and popularize hybrid technology. As a result, Toyota has expanded its new energy plant to produce hybrid models (including plug-ins) as well as pure electric models. At the same time, Toyota can avoid high fines for double points.

Public data show that at present, GAC Toyota's first, second and third production lines have a total annual production capacity of 600000 vehicles, plus the fourth production line, which has entered the construction stage, and the fifth production line, which has entered the actual operation stage of the project, by 2022, the total annual production capacity of GAC Toyota will reach 1 million vehicles. In addition, the new new energy plant built by FAW Toyota in Tianjin will add 200000 vehicles to its production capacity.

In addition to the expansion, Toyota is also expanding the introduction of products, and according to plans previously exposed by the Toyota brand, Toyota will introduce seven new models in China in 2020. Further expand the strategic layout of the "two-car strategy", so the new cars introduced by Toyota in the future will continue to adopt the way of dual-car launch. Including the new generation of Hanlanda, the new generation of Sienna, the new generation of Harrier and so on are all "double cars" made in China.

As the largest automobile market in the world, the market capacity in China is large enough, but due to the limitation and capacity problems, Toyota brand sales in China have been unable to break through the bottleneck. Therefore, with the continuous construction and expansion of factories and the introduction of new models, it reflects the Toyota brand's desire to have a larger sales volume in China. As early as 2018, Toyota set a target of hitting annual sales of 2 million vehicles in China by 2025.

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