Toyota has squandered its huge lead in hybrids and is now quite late to EVs. I'm glad to see them make these moves, but this should've happened over 10 years ago. These things take time.
Toyota is somewhat late to battery powered pure EVs (ignoring the limited RAV4 EV contemporary to the GM EV1 and Honda EV+), because they were heavily invested both hybrids, including PHEVs, and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. OTOH, other than advanced battery tech, they aren't late to anything involved in battery-powered pure EVs (PHEVs have a superset of the needs of pure EVs, and fuel cell vehicles are pure EVs), but that's just a matter of making a deal with Panasonic, which they've done now, per the story—their competitors don't have exclusive special sauce here.
Why established manufacturer proved to be better at producing EV than Tesla?
Tesla is producing more than 50% of all battery capacity in the world (China included) and this % keeps growing. It's been a decade since we started hearing "competition is coming", "these are the Tesla killer" and yet none made a dent in Tesla's sales (which are doubling every two years and should grow faster with Model Y).