Chinese manufacturers are launching electric cars at a hellish pace. Toyota’s response: Kaizen philosophy

Two years ago, Tesla was advancing at a dizzying pace. Their sales were growing and they were putting all their machinery in motion to maintain an advantage over competitors. Its production process allowed it to manage such high profit margins that later they could push hard on the price end.

Part of his secret was machine called Giga Press. The we could see in their Berlin factory with our own eyes. Huge, imposing. With it, the company produces larger chassis parts more quickly. That allows you manufacture much faster than the competition because for rivals that same piece consists of many other smaller pieces that must be assembled.

The revolution is such that large companies They seemed determined to get theirs own to be able to stand up. Tesla also announced that I was ready to create larger pieces and, therefore, further reduce times manufacturing with a larger Giga Press.

Time has told us thatElon Musk’s are having problems to carry out this evolution of the Giga Press. And that the machine, no matter how much it can make copies at a great rate, also has its counterpart as very long machine breaks when you want to modify the part in question.

But speed up development times seems to be the focus of large companies. Chery assured a long time ago that chinese rule It was kind of inevitable. For them, Europe has lost the battle because the development of their vehicles is much fasterresponding to public demands at a frenetic pace.

And although we are talking about a Chinese brand defending its business formula, the industry does seems to be moving in that direction. Honda and Nissan explored a merger to save this second one from bankruptcy. One of the objectives to be exploited with this possible merger was to be more agile in the development of automobiles. Renault boasted just a few days ago that your Twingo has been developed in record time. In China, of course.

But faced with the infernal pace and a frenetic launch number, Toyota seems to be opting for the complete opposite. Pause and perfectionism. In short: philosophy kaizen.

Kaizen philosophy or how to perfect a product

A good example of how the Chinese industry pushes to launch models on the market at a frenetic pace is that of BYD. The Chinese company is experiencing first-hand the dangers of following the devilish pace of less powerful startups when you aspire to manufacture more than five million cars a year.

And 2025 has been marked by the announcement that they would incorporate their most advanced driving systems into all their cars in China. To all, without exception, including the BYD Seagull (BYD Dolphin Surf in Europe). A car that sells for less than 10,000 euros in the Asian market.

This has become obsolete of their own cars and has had an immediate consequence, with customers waiting for the new and more advanced models, the units that do not incorporate this technology have accumulated in their dealerships waiting for a possible buyer.

That strategy, that of launching a product on the market in the shortest possible time and fixing its possible defects on the fly, relying on a adaptive capacity Extraordinarily fast, it plays against what the Japanese philosophy has always been.

In Japan they have made philosophy kaizen its greatest exponent. Guillermo García Alfonsín explains in this documentary on YouTube how Japan has built a car empire from nothing. One of the great secrets has always been to study to the point of exhaustion how to improve an existing product, paying obsessive attention to the smallest detail. The result is that Japanese companies are always at the top of the reliability tables.

The culture shock is evident. Faced with companies that develop their products at a dizzying pace and apply all kinds of improvements in the shortest possible time, Japanese perfectionism prefers to play it safe, with lead feet but with the guarantee that what they put on the market is the best result they can achieve.

a few months ago From Toyota itself it was implied that the rush had reached the heart of the company, that they felt they were missing the train of the technology of the future. To this narrative, it is now assured Nikkei, The conservative vision has prevailed: a generation of cars that will last up to nine years to safely face the leap to electric cars.

Until now, each generation of Toyota lasted between five and seven years, moving at the same times as the rest of the industry. The Japanese newspaper assures, however, that Toyota is betting on renewals of the models that will approach the decade and that it will be the remote updates that keep the car up to date. Of course, in Nikkei They point out that the models for China will follow their own rhythm, with more constant launches.

The decision also seems a response to a complicated regulatory market. Toyota is one of the few companies that has renounced the electric car As the only solution, he has been defending for some time that each market requires different cars and that it is necessary to adapt to them. And in that context, it is the automotive group that more cars sold by far.

The Japanese are treading carefully before making the leap to electrification. He Toyota bZ4X It was a sales failure and aspires with its latest update to boost the units it has put on the market. High consumption, equally high price and an improvable production process They put an end to the company’s first electric model.

The jump to the electric car is also a challenge for the company, according to the consultants employed by the same company. The reverse engineering company Caresoft Global It already alerted Toyota that its production process prevented it from offering a price-competitive product with Toyota and Chinese manufacturers.

They gave as examples the steering column and the front part of the cabin. According to their studies, the absence of a combustion engine that generates greater vibrations, temperature and noise forced the use of heavier materials to absorb all of the above and generate greater driving comfort. That with the electric car is unnecessary and only adds weight to the whole (more consumption), complexity in manufacturing and higher cost.

Tesla and other Chinese manufacturers such as BYD use a greater number of plastics in these elements, which allows them save costs. Toyota and other Japanese brands would have remained stuck in the old way of making cars, facing the challenges of a combustion engine in a car without a combustion engine.

Photography well exemplifies the two ways of approaching the manufacturing of a car. China is clear about its path, with a very short launch schedule, an enormous volume of them and greater emphasis on software and elements such as screens.

For its part, Toyota seems to be clear that they will continue as before. Unlike Chinese manufacturers, they will lengthen development times. The objective is clear: apply the philosophy Kaizen to continue offering the most reliable cars on the market and maintain loyal customers.

Photo | toyota

In Xataka | “It’s too slow”: Toyota already knows that the gap with Tesla and BYD has its origins in its Japanese company culture