The green car race is in overdrive with reports from the Nikkei suggesting that Toyota Tsusho Corp, a Toyota affiliated trading house, will start importing rare earth elements from Vietnam and India.
If proven accurate, the acquisition of independent sources of key materials would give Toyota a sizeable advantage in the production of hybrid cars.
Currently, China supplies around 90 per cent of the rare earth elements used in Japan but it is beginning to tighten its export restrictions. In the meantime, Japan’s demand for these elements is expected to increase by around 15 per cent per year. One such example is the element Neodymium, which is a key component in magnets used in motors for hybrid cars as well as in disk drives.
The imports from Vietnam and India will meet more than 20 per cent of domestic consumption, according to the report.
