Toyota Motor Corporation unveils full global battery electric line-up
Toyota Motor Corporation unveils full global battery electric line-up
Akio Toyoda, President, Toyota Motor Corporation today presented to domestic and international media, more news concerning the company’s carbon neutrality strategy by outlining its plans to offer 30 battery electric models by 2030.
Today, I would like to talk about Toyota’s strategy for achieving carbon neutrality—particularly our strategy for battery electric vehicles, which represent one of the most promising options. I believe that achieving carbon neutrality means realizing a world in which all people living on this planet continue to live happily. We want to help realize such a world. This has been and will continue to be Toyota’s wish and our mission as a global company. For that challenge, we need to reduce CO2 emissions as much as possible, as soon as possible.
We are living in a diversified world and in an era in which it is hard to predict the future. Therefore, it is difficult to make everyone happy with a one-size-fits-all option. That is why Toyota wants to prepare as many options as possible for our customers around the world. We believe that all electrified vehicles can be divided into two categories, depending on the energy that they use. One category is that of “carbon-reducing vehicles”. If the energy that powers vehicles is not clean, the use of an electrified vehicle, no matter what type it might be, would not result in zero CO2 emissions. The other category is that of “carbon-neutral vehicles”. Vehicles in this category run on clean energy and achieve zero CO2 emissions in the whole process of their use. We at Toyota will do our utmost to realize such vehicles. Today, we would like to present to you what we have been preparing for the future.
For the bZ series, we developed a dedicated platform for battery EVs to meet the diverse needs of the global market.
Let’s start with the Toyota bZ series of our dedicated battery EVs. The Toyota bZ means going “beyond Zero”. Freedom of movement and fun to drive for all. Our goal is not only to reduce CO2 emissions and other negative impacts to zero. Our goal goes beyond those. For the bZ series, we developed a dedicated platform for battery EVs to meet the diverse needs of the global market. The first model in the line-up is the bZ4X here, which we recently announced. Jointly developing it with Subaru enabled us to pursue smoothness and manoeuvrability as well as the drivability of a genuine SUV. For its launch next year, we are preparing for the production of the bZ4X at Toyota’s Motomachi Plant right this very moment. We will soon deliver it to our customers. Furthermore, we are expanding the bZ series line-up. Please have a look at these two models. This midsize SUV has a beautiful silhouette that presages a new era for battery EVs. At just a single glance, its styling can invite you to want to get in and go for a drive. And this is the most compact SUV in the series—a small battery EV with a comfortable interior designed with Europe and Japan in mind. The more batteries you add to extend cruising range, the bigger, heavier, and more expensive a vehicle becomes. Because this SUV is a small vehicle, there is something we must be thorough and very particular about. And that is—power efficiency. The important thing is to what degree we can increase a vehicle’s overall energy efficiency, in other words how much less energy a vehicle needs to run. This is exactly the technology that Toyota has been refining for more than 30 years. Putting our best efforts into all aspects of these, with this vehicle, we are aiming for a power consumption of 125 watt-hours per kilometre, which would be the highest in the compact SUV class. And this is a midsize sedan that meets customers’ expectations for a first car. We also have a large SUV with available third-row seats that allow families to experience fulfilling times together. What do you think? We will not only add battery EV options to existing vehicle models but will also offer a full line-up of reasonably priced mass-production models, such as the bZ series, to meet the needs of all kinds of customers. By doing so, we hope to deliver to customers around the world the unique and beautiful styling as well as fun-to-drive aspects of battery EVs, and the experience of a life with battery EVs.