Can Toyota's electric vehicles take on Tesla? Japanese giant details how it will 'catch up' to Musk's electric monster

Tesla's incredible success with its Model 3 and Model Y manufacturing has left giants of the automotive industry searching for tips to improve their own processes.

It marks an incredible about-face for a car company many said would never challenge the established automotive players, but now produces the top-selling passenger vehicle and SUV in many markets around the world.

Even auto giant Toyota has admitted it's looking to Tesla for tips, while Honda has labelled the impact on the industry as "Tesla shock".

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"Of course, we admit Tesla has wonderful technology," Toyota's deputy chief of global production, Yoshio Makamura, told US outlet Automotive News. "But that just motivates us to work harder to catch up.

"If we are to learn from them, it won't be a copy. We will improve upon them through Kaizen."

Telsa's unconventional production processes – which include fewer processes through gigapressing, and a much-hyped "unboxed" approach that the company says can reduce the factory footprint by 40 per cent and "build more vehicles at lower cost" – is becoming the envy of the traditional manufacturing world.

Toyota, for example, has begun prototyping gigapress manufacturing for its bZ4X. Currently, the EV's under-rear section is there result of 86 parts and 33 manufacturing processes. The gigapress technique would see it stamped from one piece and one manufacturing process, making the build "overwhelmingly faster".

The goal, says Toyota, is to halve the total number of production processes, halve the investment needed in plants, and – crucially – halve the time needed to introduce new nameplates.

It will form the bedrock of Toyota's push to reach 3.5 million EV sales globally by 2030.

Meanwhile, Tesla Model Y sales continue to boom in Australia, with the electric SUV finding 5560 buyers in June to finish the month in second place. Incredibly, the gap between it and the top-selling Toyota HiLux was only 582 vehicles, with the Japanese giant shifting 6142 examples of its popular workhorse. The Model 3 remains Australia's top-selling passenger vehicle.

Tesla's performance – which occurred before the latest round of price cuts – helped lift EV uptake in June to 8.8 per cent and saw electric SUVs outselling hybrid SUVs (8763 versus 6603), while electric passenger cars are still just behind their hybrid counterparts (2254 versus 2417).