I don’t mean that one or the other is harder, just that doing both takes longer. If Toyota has a battery pack design and factory layout their happy with then they can “just” copy it which saves time over designing the equipment then factory and then building it.
As to your 10+x comment that’s very true today, but Toyota isn’t selling any EV’s. It’s perfectly reasonable for them to have a conservative adoption curve right now rather than assuming their going to sell 10m EV’s in 8 years and then potentially massively over build capacity. This is especially true if their aiming for true mainstream cars without significant markup to justify more risky investments.
As to your 10+x comment that’s very true today, but Toyota isn’t selling any EV’s. It’s perfectly reasonable for them to have a conservative adoption curve right now rather than assuming their going to sell 10m EV’s in 8 years and then potentially massively over build capacity. This is especially true if their aiming for true mainstream cars without significant markup to justify more risky investments.