Toyota could review its entire electric strategy
According to what the media reports Reuters, Toyota would be about to completely review its way of entering the electric vehicle market in order to be more competitive against established players like Tesla. This new approach could give rise to new platforms dedicated to electricity, but also to significant improvements to existing platforms.
For Toyota, this sudden change of direction means an investment of US$38 billion that will allow it to better position itself in a world of electric vehicles that is moving at breakneck speed. At least, this is the testimony left to Reuters by four Toyota employees who would be involved in this revival.
The idea behind the reinvestment is to allow Toyota to be more flexible and agile in integrating electric vehicles so that it can produce more models at a lower cost and also be able to better evolve its vehicles in a market that is is progressing rapidly.
According to what Reuters reports, the investment will allow Toyota to introduce a brand new platform dedicated to electric as of next year and to make several changes to its existing architecture, namely the e-TNGA which currently supports Toyota bZ4X, Lexus RZ and Subaru Solterra.
We claim that Toyota has reportedly suspended development of the approximately 30 new electric models it announced in December 2021. Among those models were the electric Toyota Crown and the Toyota Compact Cruiser which was slated for release soon.
Conclusion
All this is in no way surprising coming from a manufacturer that has not had it easy in recent months, which continues to lag considerably behind in electrics. If Toyota had the objective of marketing the bZ4X at the beginning of 2022, its plans were quickly turned upside down following a massive recall forcing the manufacturer to suspend its marketing until very recently.
Then there’s the fact that Tesla markets, on average, 1 million electric vehicles globally, a number that would give a carmaker like Toyota cold sweats which, at the time of this writing, only offers one electric model in its range.
What’s even more fascinating about this story is that Toyota was once the star of green vehicles with its hybrid Prius that hit the market in the early 2000s.
Today, it is not only being beaten by new players like Tesla, but it is also being humiliated by the South Korean machine which, in the space of a few months, has brought to market three variants of a third generation of electric vehicles: the Kia EV6, the Hyundai IONIQ 5 and the Genesis GV60. Let’s hope for Toyota that this reinvestment will allow it to catch up.
