At CES in Las Vegas today, Toyota unveiled a new battery-electric multi-purpose autonomous platform concept that they aim to sell to new partners, including Amazon, DiDi, Mazda, Pizza Hut and Uber, for a multitude of different applications in their respective industries.
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After lagging behind the rest of the industry when it comes to electrification due to being entrenched in fuel cell hydrogen, Toyota is now announcing today a major expansion of its electric vehicle plans.
The Japanese automaker is aiming to launch 10 new BEVs worldwide by “the early 2020s” and it wants to have electric options throughout its entire lineup of cars by 2025.
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Panasonic has risen to the top position as a battery cell supplier for the auto industry through its partnership with Tesla, which has become the largest battery consumer in the world.
Now Toyota is courting the company for a battery partnership as the major Japanese automaker is playing catch up in the EV space.
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For years, Toyota has been betting on hydrogen fuel cell over battery-electric vehicles for its zero-emission vehicle strategy. It put the Japanese automaker behind in the electric transition in the industry.
Now Toyota admits that Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who called hydrogen fuel cell “incredibly dumb”, “is right,” but the company is still heavily investing in the technology.
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Earlier this year, Toyota and Mazda announced their biggest electric vehicle commitment to date with a new $1.6 billion joint EV factory in the US.
Over 15 states have reportedly bid with incentive packages to get the project and we now learn that they are down to “3 or 4 locations” as Illinois was reportedly eliminated from the process this week.
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After Toyota said it would be bringing electric vehicle prototypes to the 45th Tokyo Motor Show 2017 later this month, we had hope that there could be an early version of their first electric car that the automaker is expected to launch in 2020.
The company has now unveiled those concepts, three of them, ahead of the show and it doesn’t look like anything they would bring to production.
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Earlier this year, Mazda and Toyota created a new joint-venture to develop electric vehicles and build a US factory.
Now the two Japanese automakers lay out their plans for EVs as Denso, an automotive component supplier, joins them.
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Toyota is undoubtedly lagging behind the rest of the auto industry when it comes to all-electric vehicles. They don’t have a single purely battery-powered car on the market since discontinuing the Rav4 EV, which was a compliance car with a powertrain made by Tesla, and they don’t plan to have one for the next few years. We reviewed the Prius Prime which we found disappointing, noting that it was a shame that this green innovator had fallen so far.
Takeshi Uchiyamada, Toyota’s Chairman, laid out why they are not making significant moves in the sector.
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Mazda and Toyota, arguably the two major automakers least invested in electric vehicles, are working on a new joint-venture to develop electric cars.
There’s been a lot of consolidation in the auto industry over the years, but the interesting aspect of this case is that surviving the electric car revolution in the industry is at least partly the reason behind it.
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We reported on how Toyota is late to the electric car revolution just yesterday. While the Japanese automaker doesn’t seem to have many EVs in the pipeline, it has now confirmed that it plans to be among the first automakers to commercialize electric cars using new solid-state batteries.
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Toyota has long been one of the most reticent large automakers when it comes to producing all-electric vehicles. It had no problems with hybrids, e.g. the Prius, but the Japanese automaker would only produce the bare minimum when it came to zero-emission mandates, e.g. the Rav4 EV in California, and they quickly lobbied to change those mandates.
They are now doing the same in China, where the government is about to ramp up its electric car mandate, and while Toyota, like almost all other automakers, tried to stop the mandate, it looks like it’s going to happen and it might finally force the automaker to mass produce EVs.
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More recent Tesla enthusiasts might not be aware that Tesla and Toyota used to have close ties. Back in 2010, Toyota invested $50 million in Tesla and they brokered a heavily discounted sale of the Nummi factory, which is now Tesla’s Fremont factory.
Tesla also used to supply the electric powertrain of the Toyota RAV4 EV up until 2014 when the program stopped. At that point, Toyota sold most of its Tesla shares for a healthy profit and this weekend, it confirmed that it sold all its remaining shares before the end of last year.
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Late last year, Toyota finally took a significant step toward making electric vehicles after years of being stuck in fuel cell development. They set up a new division to build their first all-electric vehicle and they even put CEO Akio Toyoda in charge of the new team.
Now Toyoda is apparently still fleshing out the Japanese automaker’s electric vehicle strategy and looking at Tesla for inspiration.
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NVIDIA, a leading GPU maker, has been emerging as an important computing power supplier for the automotive industry’s transition to autonomous driving. Over the past two decades, the computing power in the passenger cars has increased significantly, but it’s nothing compared to how it will have to increase over the next decade in order for cars to drive themselves.
Toyota has become today the latest automaker to team up with NVIDIA in order to accelerate their autonomous vehicle program.
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Toyota is undoubtedly having difficulties selling the Mirai, its hydrogen car, in the US. Despite cutting the price on several occasions, with now a lease at only $350 (down from $500) in California, the Japanese automaker can’t find a market for the vehicle and only delivered 782 units during the first 2 years of production. That’s despite the millions of dollars in government money spent on refueling infrastructure.
The automaker is now turning to big rigs to use the fuel cell hydrogen powertrain with a new prototype unveiled today.
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Toyota, the largest automaker in the world, announced today a new $35 million initiative to use artificial intelligence and machine learning to develop new advanced materials with a focus on creating the next generation battery for electric vehicles.
The project is led by the US-based Toyota Research Institute (TRI) and they will work with “research entities, universities, and companies on materials science research.”
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It’s the Geneva Motor Show and new car concepts are being unveiled left and right. Electric vehicles account for a significant number of those new concepts to the point that Toyota, which is known for betting on hydrogen fuel cells and its hacked up Prius Prime over EVs is also debuting a new electric concept.
The Japanese automaker says that it commissioned the new vehicle called ‘i-Tril’ from its French design studio in collaboration with the company’s ED² design studio in Nice based on research on the company’s younger demographic.
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At the Prius Challenge event in Sonoma California today, Toyota unveiled today its second generation autonomous vehicles platform developed by the Toyota Research Institute (TRI).
While Toyota demoed an interesting system, it certainly has to be one of the most ridiculous-looking self-driving platforms we have seen so far. If you look closely, you can actually see the Lexus LS 600hL underneath all those lidar sensors.
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Shortly after Toyota unveiled a new solar roof option for the 2017 Prius Prime, Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced that the Tesla Model 3 will “probably” also have a solar roof option.
Now we learn that Panasonic, a current solar cell and battery cell supplier for Tesla, is releasing a new solar product designed for automotive applications, which will first be used in Toyota’s solar roof option for the Prius.
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Automakers will be going to Geneva in the next two weeks for the 87th Geneva International Motor Show. A few of them have announced that they will bring new electric vehicle concepts to the trade show.
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Today, Toyota announced changes in executives’ areas of responsibility, as well as personnel changes at the sub-executive managerial level. The most important change by far is the appointment of Akio Toyoda, the company’s CEO and grandson of founder Kiichiro Toyoda, as President of a new ‘EV Business Planning’ department.
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Toyota announced today what it referred to as a “breakthrough” in battery research and development that will “lead to longer battery life and longer driving range for vehicles using lithium-ion batteries”, according to a press release sent out by the Japanese automaker.
The company claims it will enable “up to 15 percent greater range” for battery-powered electric vehicles.
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We were excited a few weeks ago when reports came out that Toyota was going to put together a team to develop long-range electric cars and bring them to market by 2020. Today, the Japanese automaker officially confirmed this effort, but not without throwing some cold water on it.
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As we reported earlier this year, the few automakers still entrenched in hydrogen fuel cell technology were starting to show signs of succumbing to physics and turning to battery-powered electric cars in order to comply with stricter zero-emission regulations.
Now one of the most prominent proponents of hydrogen fuel cell cars, Toyota, is reportedly planning to mass produce battery-powered long-range electric cars by 2020.
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