Toyota’s slow start in the BEV arena
Toyota is apparently planning worldwide sales of only 500,000 purely electric cars in 2025, which is only a fraction of what other automakers such as VW and Tesla are planning.
An article in the Japanese business newspaper Nikkei reports that these e-targets Toyota would just enable Toyota to meet environmental regulations in China and Europe.
“We won’t be able to clear forthcoming regulations with hybrid vehicles, and EV and other technology will be necessary,” Shigeki Terashi, Executive Vice President and Head of Toyota’s electrification program, told Nikkei. Conversely, this also means that the fuel cell cars such as the Mirai, which have long been favoured by the Japanese company, will not come in such large numbers that Toyota could meet its CO2 targets and EV quotas over the next few years. Battery-electric cars are now to be used as somewhat of an interim solution.
At least ten new BEV models from Toyota are scheduled to make their international debut by 2025, with the Lexus UX 300e making its debut this year. Toyota only plans to produce 10,000 electric cars this year and 30,000 next year, while all of the company’s electric vehicles will be made at the Motomachi factory in Toyota City, according to the report.
Toyota set itself the goal of increasing sales of electrified vehicles to 5.5 million vehicles by 2025 – three times the figure for 2018. 4.5 million of these will come from hybrids and plug-in hybrids, with the rest from fuel cell cars and purely battery-electric cars. While BEVs are promoted by regulatory authorities, especially in Europe and China, but both markets are among the smaller sales regions for the Toyota Group. In markets such as Japan or the USA, HEV and PHEV will take the main focus.
Toyota has already entered into cooperation agreements with CATL and BYD for its electrical plans. The vehicles from these cooperations are to be launched on the market as early as this year; as Chinese quotas require. As Terashi said in October during the Tokyo Motor Show, the first BEVs will not be introduced in Europe until 2022 or 2023. “We will start with smaller models,” he said. Terashi left open the question of whether these will be completely new models or electric versions of existing vehicles – such as the recently introduced Yaris Hybrid, which is based on the TNGA platform.
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