Toyota teases an electric SUV that will launch in 2021
It'll be built on Toyota's new e-TNGA platform.
The Prius may be one of the most iconic green vehicles in the world, but Toyota is among the last to adopt pure EVs. Now that electric vehicle sales are starting to take off, however, Toyota is finally ready to get serious. The automaker has teased an all-electric EV for the European market based on its forthcoming e-TNGA platform, that it plans to fully reveal sometime in 2021.
Toyota only revealed an outline of the new vehicle, but it looks much like the SUV Toyota showed off last year when it announced a partnership with Subaru, as Autoblog noted (below). Toyota noted then that the new EV would be about the size of a RAV4 or Forester.
Where Toyota once said that it didn’t think it would sell many pure electric cars, the company is now saying that it plans to produce 5.5 million EVs every year by 2025. During that time, Toyota will launch 60 new electrified vehicles, including hybrids and PHEVs, EVs and hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles like the all-new second-generation Mirai.
The e-TNGA platform supports front-, rear- or all-wheel drive and uses modular battery modules to support different vehicle designs and requirements. To that end, we’re likely to see all-electric cars similar to the Corolla, Camry and Highlander.
Toyota deputy chief officer Koji Toyoshima added that Toyota plans to mass-produce EVs with solid-state battery packs in the first half of the 2020s. That lines up with what the company has promised previously, though it’s not clear how it plans to achieve that goal given that other companies like BMW and Fisker have so far failed to deliver.
Though it’s very late to the EV game, Toyota said that its hybrid and PHEV technology has given it the electric savoir-faire needed to quickly develop all-electric vehicles. “Hybrid success has given us the foundation we need for other electrified powertrains – which will be introduced when the time, the market, and the infrastructure are right,” said Toyota Europe’s Andrea Carlucci. “And that time is getting closer.”
