Although Shanghai is far away, the Chinese car show taking place today is an important one. Especially for Toyota. The brand will present the bZ4X Concept, a concrete preview of an electric SUV, the final production version of which is expected on the market in mid-2022.
Although Toyota has been masters of hybrid powertrains in Europe for several decades, the brand does not have a single full-electric model in the range after the fuel cell Mirai. This will change in the middle of next year. Toyota will bring an electric SUV to the European market in 2022, which it is looking forward to with this bZ4X Concept.
The bZ4X is an important vehicle for Toyota in several respects. For example, the relatively angular electric SUV uses Toyota’s E-TNGA platform, a modular platform specially developed for electric cars that will house many other electric Toyotas in the future. The bZ part in the name of this study model stands for ‘Beyond Zero’ and is the prefix with which Toyota indicates that it is an electric model. The number after it indicates the placement in the range, the X indicates that it is a crossover or SUV. It’s comparable to BMW’s i-label, Mercedes-Benz’s EQ line and Hyundai’s Ioniq division.
Toyota bZ4X
The Toyota bZ4X – like the E-TNGA platform – was developed together with Subaru. Within a few years, Subaru will also come up with its own version of the electric SUV. A mock-up of that car has already surfaced. Extensive technical specifications of the four-wheel drive bZ4X Concept, thanks to two electric motors, will be kept under Toyota for a while.
Design and technology
From the outside, the bZ4X can hardly be recognized as a Toyota. The car has a fairly closed nose and LED headlights where the LED daytime running lights are optically connected by a silver strip. There are black plastic parts under the headlights. The platform developed purely for EVs naturally brings advantages. For example, Toyota promises that the bZ4X has the legroom of a D-segmenter thanks to a long wheelbase in the back. More about the interior: the bZ4X has a dashboard placed low in the car. This not only ensures a good view of the road, it also gives the interior of the electric SUV a spacious appearance. Almost all buttons of the control modules are located in the center console. Directly behind the wheel is a display that functions as a digital instrumentation. The final bZ4X seems to be equipped with steer-by-wire technology, just like this study model. So there is no longer a physical steering rod that connects the steering wheel to the rest of the steering mechanism. To emphasize this technique, the Toyota bZ4X Concept gets a strikingly shaped steering wheel that seems to come straight from the future. Thanks to the highly variable steering system, it is no longer necessary to move your hands when cornering.
Toyota delivered the previous generation Prius Plug-in and the plug-in hybrid of the current generation Prius with a sunroof with solar cells, technology that in a sense also returns to the bZ4X. The majority of the energy for the battery pack must of course be drawn from the charging station or from the socket.
Toyota bZ4X
bZ future
The Toyota bZ4X will be the first, but certainly not the last EV to hang under the bZ label. Until 2025, the brand will introduce seven fully electric bZ models. That does not mean that Toyota will only make EVs. Fortunately, the company is also sticking to its hybrid plug-in hybrid and fuel cell technology. By 2025, Toyota aims to have more than 70 electrified models in its range worldwide, including fifteen fully electric models. In Europe, more than 70 percent of Toyotas sold must have a hybrid powertrain by 2025. Ten percent is expected to be a plug-in hybrid and ten percent must be completely emission-free (electric or hydrogen).
Fun fact: the bZ4X is Toyota’s first electric SUV for the European market, but it is not the brand’s first electric SUV worldwide. In China, the Toyota-GAC joint venture already sells an electric C-HR, and Toyota sold a series of electric units of both the first and second generation RAV4 in the United States.