Toyota has made several announcements that suggest it may be stepping up its electric vehicle strategy compared to what was previously announced.
In an annual report of the company’s financial results presented on Wednesday, president and CEO Koji Sato announced that it plans to launch ten models ranging from luxury cars to compact cars and commercial vehicles, “primarily in the United States and China.”
Toyota 1.5 million basic EV
The CEO upgraded the company’s goal of selling 1.5 million electric batteries by 2026 as “base volume” and said that for battery supply, the company “will find a way to quickly quickly secure the required volumes by increasing our in-house production capacity and working with our partners.”
However, that boosted capacity proposal has yet to lead to any updates on Toyota’s EV targets in the US. At the most recent update, in 2021, Toyota predicted that 85% of cars in the US will be sold by 2030 There will still be an exhaust.
Three Toyota platforms for electric vehicles 2026
Toyota points out that its 2026 electric cars can actually be built on three different platforms: a software platform, an electronics platform, and a body and chassis platform. It has also said that it is completely rethinking the electric vehicle manufacturing process.
The company also announced on Wednesday that it will launch the next-generation EV (above) in concept form at the Tokyo auto show in October. In a trailer sent out ahead of the financial presentation main, the photo was captioned “more effective” and “heart-fluttering”.
Toyota has teased several EV concepts for late 2021, with the announcement that they are already planning 30 new electric vehicles globally by 2030, so it’s not clear how much overlap could be between those old concepts and the production-restricted concepts. In October, it was reported Pause development on some electric vehicleswhile considering a larger commitment.
It’s unclear if that commitment will be fulfilled, but in Wednesday’s update, Toyota included a three-row SUV in its timeline of additional models in 2026.
Toyota’s Future Electric Vehicle
Nice weather Toyota bZ4X electric crossover is a low-volume model for many markets, bZ3 is an electric sedan for China and Proace Electric is an electric van variant for China and Europe. There are also Lexus RZ for USA, China and Europe and exclusively for Europe Lexus UX300e.
While Toyota may be focusing more on electric vehicles for North America, that doesn’t mean Toyota will focus on them globally. It aims to increase its share in emerging markets and Asia, and in Wednesday’s presentation it pointed to projections that in Asia the hybrid market is expected to grow from 8% in 2022 to 21% in 2030, while battery electric vehicles will increase to 5% by then, from just 1% in 2022.
As Toyota has argued in recent years, with limited lithium supplies, it can bring reduce overall emissions even more by producing hybrids instead of relying entirely on electric vehicles. Certainly, not everyone agrees.
