It is not difficult to see that Toyota, which has always been conservative, is also very cautious in the pace of moving towards the field of pure electric, and a number of new car-making forces are "crazy fighting" in the capital market at the moment, Toyota's "giant wheel of traditional cars" has not adjusted the bow to electric vehicles for a long time, and this is not unrelated to Toyota's attitude of wanting to keep Toyota's advantages in the era of fuel vehicles and how to achieve carbon neutrality. However, on December 14 this year, Toyota released 17 pure electric vehicle models in one go at a pure electric vehicle conference, of which 15 were new concept products, including cars, SUVs, MPVs and even small trucks.
Fans familiar with Akio Toyoda should know that he himself has shelled the Japanese government's goal of achieving carbon neutrality by promoting pure electric vehicles by 2050 is unrealistic and even devastating to the Japanese economy. However, such remarks disappeared after this conference. Among these 17 vehicles is the BZ4X EV that we are familiar with, which is the first pure electric model under the Toyota e-TNGA architecture and has met with us at the previous Guangzhou Auto Show. So, let's take a look at the Toyota bZ4X EV and see how Toyota thinks about the future!
For this pure electric SUV, there are actually many places to talk about, such as the current electric vehicles are concentrating on improving the endurance, but it has opened a new dimension - to improve battery life. Yes, according to the information currently revealed, the battery equipped with the Toyota bZ4X will be at least 90% of the initial capacity if it is used for 10 years! At the same time, Toyota bZ4X EV also brings solar charging, steer-by-wire and other innovative technologies, when the new forces are still on automatic driving, lidar "inner roll", Toyota with a BZ4X EV to broaden the track!
Before I start talking about how the Toyota BZ4X EV is different, I would like to briefly introduce it. Even if it is the first model under the e-TNGA platform, when you first see the Toyota bZ4X, you must not feel the light. Yes, only from the design point of view, the Hi-Tech and Emotion design concept it uses is not far ahead in the current market environment, and even you can find some of the shadow of Toyota RAV4 from the BZ4X EV, of course, according to the information revealed by foreign media, the current Toyota bZ4X EV is very close to next year's mass production version.
Therefore, when the author uses "conservative" to describe the appearance of Toyota bZ4X, it should not be too much, at least when people look at what kind of pure electric model Toyota will hand over with the eyes of expectation, the BZ4X EV is not as "avant-garde" as Tesla Cyberruck, especially when you see the parameter performance of 311 miles (about 500 kilometers) of endurance, which confirms the author's statement. However, the Toyota BZ4X EV left the killer behind this time.
The core highlight of Toyota BZ4X EV is in battery safety and durability, according to relevant information, BZ4X EV uses lithium-ion batteries jointly developed with CATL and handed over to Toyota's exclusive production line for production. Let's take a brief look at its battery pack information.
With a capacity of 71.4 kWh, it can support the Toyota bZ4X EV to achieve a cruising range of about 500 km (WLTC standard), and there is still a cruising range of about 450 km after 10 years (or 240,000 km).
Toyota bZ4X EV's AC charger has a maximum power of 6.6 kW and a DC charging maximum power of 150 kW, which can be charged 80% in 30 minutes.
From the perspective of battery capacity and maximum endurance, compared with the new forces of independent car manufacturing that now have a range of more than 700km, Toyota bZ4X EV does not have much advantage, but from the perspective of battery durability and safety, Toyota bZ4X EV has indeed reached the current world-class level.
According to the current horizontal comparison of Toyota's products in China, the 10-year battery attenuation degree of Toyota CH-R EV and Yize E Jinqing is 20%-25%, while the 10-year battery attenuation degree of the Prius generation and the second generation of the gasoline-electric hybrid model is 35%-40%. Similarly, even Tesla and BYD, which are currently leading in Sankyo technology, cannot achieve a 10-year attenuation of the battery for 10 years. Therefore, it is not an exaggeration to praise it with "Toyota brings the quality requirements to the electric age".
So, how does the Toyota BZ4X EV achieve a 10-year attenuation of the battery attenuated by only 10%? At present, the widespread speculation is that Toyota starts from thermal management. It is well known that during intense driving or other driving processes that impose a large load on the battery, each battery cell will show signs of local abnormal heat. The small partners who have understood the CTP technology of the Ningde era should understand that this CTP battery pack uses a water-cooled solution on the passenger car, and its specific working principle is to put the water-cooled plate under the entire battery pack, and directly contact with the module base plate to cool the battery cell. At the same time, in order to improve the thermal conductivity efficiency, the sides of the battery cell and the inside of the housing are filled with thermal conductive adhesive. In addition, a pressure or temperature sensor (detect thermal runaway in advance) is built between the cell sidewall and the cell housing.
At present, the CATL CTP battery can be regarded as one of the best battery technologies in the industry, and this is presumably the core reason why Toyota and CATL will cooperate to develop batteries. Of course, in the cooperation with the Ningde era, Toyota undoubtedly gave its own battery optimization plan to achieve its 10-year and 240,000-kilometer battery attenuation degree of no more than 10%.
In addition, another thing Toyota has to do, as they have been doing in the era of fuel vehicles, is to focus on the quality of the battery cell and the production and manufacturing process, and minimize the impact of metal foreign bodies on the battery pack manufacturing process, thereby improving the durability and safety of the battery. At the same time, the Toyota bZ4X EV also uses means such as heat pump air conditioning, seat heating, steering wheel heating and radiant heaters at the foot of the front seats to ensure that the vehicle's mileage is not discounted when driving in winter.
Toyota's research on solar charging systems has long been no secret, as early as 2017 Toyota installed a solar panel on the oil-electric hybrid version of the Prius PHV, but between the technology at that time and the problem of immature technology and low energy conversion rate, it did not meet the standards on the road. However, after technical iteration, the solar charging system on the Toyota bZ4X EV at this time was estimated by Toyota to provide about 230 miles of driving range (front-drive version) per full charge, and up to about 1800 kilometers per year.
But then again, solar charging also has advantages and disadvantages, as far as the current point of view, the manufacturing cost and maintenance cost of automotive solar charging panels are very high, affecting the beauty at the same time, domestic consumers like the panoramic sunroof must also be castrated. Therefore, this direction is currently only tried by Toyota and Hyundai, and whether it can become mainstream in the future can only wait and see.
I believe that in the era of fuel vehicles, it is difficult for fans to associate the control with Toyota, but this time the BZ4X EV may change everyone's inherent thinking, and the steer-by-wire control it is Toyota's first mass-produced model equipped with this technology, and this technology has been widely used in the aviation field before.
The technology is simply to put, that is, the Toyota BZ4X EV steering wheel and tires between the abandonment of the mechanical connection, while the steering wheel will be set to the rotation angle of plus or minus 150 °, without changing hands to play wheels can complete the steering operation, not only improve the steering accuracy and sense of control, the user can also completely isolate the road bumps or partially transmit road information as needed, so that the driver can get a good sense of the road, to achieve Toyota's so-called "single-action grip"; more importantly, Users can also freely design force transmission characteristics and angle transmission characteristics according to their preferences, making the driving experience more rich and interesting.
In some scenes of our daily use of cars, such as U-turn, warehousing, and high-speed cornering, the driving burden will also be greatly reduced, and it will also be a blessing for female drivers.
In fact, with the advent of the era of electric vehicles, the demand for vehicle intelligence has increased, and the author believes that steering-by-WireSystem (SBW) will soon be adopted in a large area, because it has many advantages, including space saving, lightweighting, more flexible vehicle design, especially the possibility of tube column intrusion in the event of a vehicle collision is reduced, improving vehicle safety.
In addition, a more important reason is that the steering-by-wire can be completely separated from the driver to achieve steering control, which is very much in line with the intention of automatic driving, and is considered to be one of the auxiliary technologies for fully autonomous driving, which is one of the reasons why the author at the beginning of the article believes that the Toyota BZ4X EV will open up a new track in the electric era.
Editor's comments: Akio Toyoda has been "against the japanese ban on the sale of fuel vehicles" remarks were buckled "against the trend", He Xiaopeng has also mocked the CEO on social media, but this time Toyota brought 15 new pure electric vehicles in one go, which is undoubtedly a successful response to the doubters.
And when we specifically fall on the product, we can find that Toyota is still the same as ever, when everyone is doing large displacement engines, Toyota has forced small displacement engines and escaped the global energy crisis; when everyone is turbocharging and squeezing power on small displacement engines, Toyota's oil-electric hybrid system has quietly occupied the market; and this time Toyota is on the new track of electrification, and it is not "rolled in" on automatic driving like most manufacturers, but the main battery durability and safety. Even the control abandoned by electric vehicles, and from the characteristics of the Toyota bZ4X car, the author has every reason to believe that it will affect the direction of future electric vehicle competition, at that time, with the maturity of lithium supplement and other technologies in 2022, we look forward to next year Toyota bZ4X EV after the launch of the market.