NEW YORK Big, futuristic investment bets on the post-coronavirus period still feel too early. Yet Toyota Motor Corp. seems to be confident that the dollars will matter.

That stands out in a world where most rivals can barely think about cash flows for the next six months, let alone investments a year from now. While guiding toward an 80 percent drop in operating profits for its 2020 fiscal year, Toyota says it plans to drop capital expenditures by around 3 percent and keep that spending at 1.35 trillion ($12.6 billion), while lowering research and development only 1 percent. As a portion of net revenues, R&D would rise to 4.6 percent to about 1.35 trillion, up from 3.7 percent, which is the average since 2017.

Toyota is doing what it hasnt during previous crises that damaged supply chains and businesses around the world. In a speech during last weeks earnings call, President Akio Toyoda recalled the four difficult years after the financial crisis, made worse in 2011 by a devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan and flooding in Thailand. The company cut costs and investments and grew substantially leaner, but lost necessary muscle. Toyoda said that because we stopped everything to stop the bleeding, including investing in the future, we ended up needing some time to strengthen our company composition.

In the past couple of years, Toyota has splashed out billions on the future of cars. The investments range from $1 billion in Southeast Asias largest ride-hailing service Grab Holdings Inc., the largest by an automaker to $500 million in Uber Technologies Inc. It also has set up a joint venture with Softbank Corp. Meanwhile, the Toyota Research Institute and its Advanced Development offshoot have tried to go big into fields like artificial intelligence.

Compare and evaluate the NPV and IRR methods capital budgeting decision techniques that can be used. Which method will be desirable for this particular project, and why?