According to the news report, Toyota and Mazda will each take the partnership as an opportunity to work on the development of Electronic Vehicles (EV). Toyota has claimed that they will begin selling EVs before the end of 2020, and Mazda has planned to sell EVs in 2019 as well.According to the Nikkei on August 4th, Toyota and Mazda has been in the final stages of negotiation for a joint partnership. It is expected that Toyota will receive nearly 5% stock right from Mazda. Also, Mazda will put up capital for Toyota.

The news report also indicated that Toyota and Mazda will cooperate primarily in the U.S. Their plan is to construct a new factory at the southern part of the US through the new company that they will set up. The new factory is expected to have an annual production capacity of approximately 300 thousand or so.

Currently, around half of the cars of Toyota's market in the U.S. are produced locally, and Mazda hasn't set up factory in the U.S. It mainly relies on exports from Japan/Mexico to America.

In response to the Nikkei report, Toyota and Mazda have both released a press release on August 4th declaring that the sources of the information aren't official. The press release pointed out that Toyota and Mazda have first agreed to work together in business on May 2015, and that they are still negotiating on the specific contents of their cooperation. They will further discuss the details of their cooperation at the board meeting on August 4th.

According to Japanese news reports, during H1 (January-June) of 2017, sales volume around the world of Toyota Group, including Daihatsu and Hino, grew 3% to 5.129 million vehicles compared to the same time last year. It broke the record for the highest sales volume in history. However, Toyota still fell to third place in the global ranking.

Thanks to the incorporation of Mitsubishi by Nissan-Renault Alliance last October, the company's sales volume for H1 grew 7% to 5.268 million vehicles compared to the same time last year. It surpassed 2016 leading enterprise Volkswagen and reached to the first place. Volkswagen's sales volume of H1 grew 1% to 5.156 million vehicles.

The release of the survey from Fuji Keizai on June 22 showed that EV's annual sales volume is expected to increase to 4.07 million by 2030, which will surpass hybrid vehicle since its annual sales volume is expected to be 3.91 million by 2030. Afterwards, the gap between them will be bigger. Fuji Keizai believes that owing to the rising demand of China, EV's sales volume around the world will expand to 6.30 million by 2035, which is 13.4 times larger than that of 2016.

(photo source: Toyota)