Toyota & Tesla team up – ish

Toyota has taken a £35 million stake in Tesla and Tesla will be building their Model S at an empty Toyota plant in Fremont, California.

Tesla has – despite only producing a Lotus with a million laptop batteries and an electric motor for three times the price of the actual Lotus – managed to win hearts and minds. Even the Tesla Model S saloon car – which no one in the industry believes they can bring to market for anything like their headline price – seems to be accepted at face value by the public.

All of which might explain why Toyota has rushed to get in to bed with Tesla by stumping up £35 million to buy Tesla stock, and doing a deal with Tesla to build the Tesla S at its now empty plant in Fremont California, which used to make the Corolla and Tacoma.

What is even more peculiar is that the Toyota plant in California was making 500,000 cars a year before it closed. Tesla has so far – in its entire existence – made just 1,000 cars. There are no real production estimates for the Tesla S, but it seems unlikely they will rise above 5 figures a year.

And what of Mercedes in all this? Mercedes took a 10% stake in Tesla last year and this latest cosying up between Toyota and Tesla make no mention of Mercedes.

This all feels more like flim-flam than business. About perception rather than reality. Toyota’s commitment to this is around two days profit. It looks like a PR exercise from Toyota after all their bad press over ‘ThrottleGate’ and an easy way to be seen once again as innovators and ‘Good Guys’.

Maybe we’re just too cynical.