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MagyarToyota takes Tesla gigacasting and improves its production efficiency 20% for new Lexus EV it will unveil in October
Toyota recently announced that its ambitious EV strategy will debut with the Lexus brand, and has now revealed the production line to achieve it. It just demonstrated an amalgamation of its praised "kanban" workflow and just-in-time delivery systems with new production cost saving methods like Tesla's gigacasting.
The processes that made it the envy of the automotive industry and the world's biggest car maker have now been fused with a new self-driving production line and a gigacasting innovation that it estimates will be 20% more productive. Toyota can now change the worn gigacasting molds in 20 minutes rather than the 24-hour period that has been required so far, including at Tesla. While this will speed up the EV assembly process rather significantly, Toyota didn't stop there, and has introduced a production line along which the electric vehicles move on their own to the next assembly station.
Toyota showcased how one of its electric SUVs moves along the factory floor to the seat installer where a robot arm took the seats from a container and placed them in the vehicle. Upon assembly, the EVs will now be driven out of the factory and loaded on their transport trucks completely autonomously instead of requiring human drivers to be on their feet loading cars for hours in a day. There are other smaller EV production cost savings that Toyota demonstrated, too, like polishing a bumper to give it that metallic shine instead of painting it.
The first electric vehicle that will be made on Toyota's new EV production line will carry the Lexus brand, and its specifics will be introduced next month. "In 2026, Lexus will introduce a next-generation battery EV with a revolutionary modular vehicle body structure, a drastically changed production method, and a completely renewed software platform," tips the company, and adds that the concept "will be unveiled at the Japan Mobility Show in October of this year as part of Lexus commitment to changing the future of automobiles through electrification."
