‘The practical EV’
Are the heydays of the plug-in hybrid over? This seems to be the case with many brands, but at Toyota they are far from finished with the plug-in hybrid. PHEVs should even play a major role in Toyota’s future and are portrayed by the Japanese as ‘the practical EV’.
Toyota will stick to what it calls the ‘multi-pathway approach’ for the future. This means that the brand is betting on several horses when it comes to future powertrains, in which the PHEV should play a remarkably large role. This is evident from an extensive presentation with updates on Toyota’s future plans, which were presented with much fanfare in December 2021. In the presentation, the management of the brand naturally talks a lot about BEVs, or fully electric ‘battery electric vehicles’. At the same time, there remains a role for hydrogen (especially for trucks), regular hybrids and, yes, plug-in hybrids.
Toyota will invest heavily in PHEVs in the coming years, if we are to believe Executive Vice President Hiroki Nakajima. Nakajima says that Toyota will present the plug-in hybrid as ‘the practical BEV’. An enormous electric range is apparently part of this, because the Toyota plug-in hybrid of the future must be able to drive more than 200 kilometers electrically. With the new Prius, Toyota is actually already giving a head start. The new Prius is always plug-in in Europe and hyper-efficient on paper. Although 200 kilometers electrically is not yet in the picture, the very streamlined Prius on paper will be about seventy kilometers away on power.
EVs
Do not think that Toyota is giving the fully electric car a smaller role with this. The brand is announcing major reforms to enable a major electric revolution, including a special ‘all-in-one team’ to steer the EV transition in the right direction. There will be ten new EVs before 2026, which should also have the necessary revolutionary features around that year. For example, Toyota promises cars that are twice as efficient as they are today, mainly due to new battery technologies. There will also be a new operating system with over-the-air updates and a platform that makes it easier to tailor the driving characteristics of the car to the wishes of the moment. On the production side, the Japanese are also firmly streamlining things. Automating processes should make EV production simpler and therefore cheaper.
Lexus.
In the Toyota presentation we also come across a picture of an unknown Lexus. The apparently very streamlined, strikingly low and liftback-like car was not part of the large series of concept cars from 2021 and is therefore interesting. But it seems to be more about a general vision of the future than the harbinger of a specific car, although that may turn out to be different in the future.
– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl