It must be a really exciting time to work on Toyota R&D. If you are really passionate about the future of the automobile as something you drive and your life can circle around solving hitherto unsolvable issues, that’s the place to be. From cheaper Hydrogen fuel cells that do not require precious metals to cracking the code on the solid-state battery (which they are also attempting to rid of precious metals). All of these things are coming to a head relatively quickly, and at a moment where the distribution of technologies that will replace the paradigm of the standard vehicle isn’t set in stone.
While they are betting hard on Hydrogen, Toyota has decided they will hedge their bets.
Enter the bZ4X. Stupid name, decent price. And aimed at the heart of what “normal people” look for in a car there days. A relatively compact crossover that seems to answer the question “What if Rav4, but electric?”. Not a bad strategy considering Toyota is moving them at the rate of about 400,000+ a year. You will also see the bZ4X as the slightly better named Subaru Solterra, as this is a product of the same joint venture that gave us the GR86. From then on all is at it should be for a normal, non musk-hype mid-priced EV. 250 miles of so of range, front or all wheel drive, capable of level 3 charging. It’s an EV much in the same way the Corolla is a car.
So why am I sullying your screens with it? Two reasons. For one, it acts as sort of an admission for Toyota, nevermind the capabilities of Hydrogen or what we could be able to do with it in the future, the market for passenger vehicles remains relatively small, and we’re quickly reaching the point where not offering some sort of BEV will be a net negative for your company, no matter how many plug-in hybrids you make. It’s not only the sort of people we mocked for being Prius drivers that buy BEVs anymore, they haven’t been for a while, as they improve in range and get closer in user experience to standard ICE vehicles, the people who have little to no interest in cars beyond a commuter pod (and those that do have an interest but need a commuter pod regardless) are looking for alternative. This is before we take into account the cars designed to appeal to the automotive enthusiast, wealthy or otherwise.
The second? Durability, people who take any argument about the BEV and immediately label it with the catch-up of “FUD” will find the next bit of this article trite, but batteries have a useful life, and people will throw away a perfectly functional car because the range tanks a decade or so much earlier than the average age of a vehicle in the roads today (14.6 years or so), which is wasteful and harmful for the environment, even if not to the extent of consuming all that gasoline or diesel on a ICE vehicle. I have no illusions that Toyota and longtime partner Panasonic have some special sauce on this generation of EV that will prevent that from happening. What they do have is a tendency to overbuild things. With any luck, they will have provided enough overprovisioning to make the worries of getting rid of the car be so far away in the future that the first owner will get bored of it long before they need to shell out ten grand for a new battery pack.
And the aftermarket will have decent options for the second owner.
