Toyota, Mazda, and major Japanese supplier Denso have announced that they will jointly develop basic structural technologies for electric vehicles and establish a new company as part of the collaboration. Called EV C.A. Spirit Corporation, the company will have engineers from all three companies working to develop basic EV structural tech for a wide variety of vehicles across different segments. Toyota and Mazda previously announced an EV partnership but didn’t disclose many details at the time.
Mazda and Denso will invest 5 percent in the new venture and Toyota will be the largest investor, pitching in 90 percent. The creation of the new joint venture is a response to stricter emissions regulations in many parts of the world, which according to the three companies, has caused regulations that require a specific portion of their sales be electric vehicles. In order to comply with the new regulations without sacrificing sustainable growth within the companies, they have to develop a new range of powertrains and technologies, with EVs being one of the most important ones.
Toyota, Mazda, and Denso, however, concede that EVs have yet to find greater acceptance in the marketplace and that the investments to cover all global markets is an issue for individual automakers due to different standards in every region. To solve that issue, Toyota, Mazda, and Denso will create a basic EV structure that’s compatible on all segments and vehicle types so that it can respond quickly to market changes. Each company will have a contribution to the new collaboration: Toyota’s will be the TNGA platform, Mazda’s its expertise in bundled product planning and computer modeling-based development, and Denso’s will be its electronic tech expertise.
EV C.A. Spirit Corporation will be involved in researching how best to optimize performance and functionality of EVs from individual components to the whole vehicle. The collaboration between the two companies will take advantage of current production facilities and dedicate an equal amount of resources to make development as efficient as possible. EVs will also be matched to Mazda’s and Toyota’s brand identity in order to keep them unique.
Source: Toyota, Mazda