Toyota + pure electricity, the two labels put together, full of conflict, after all, in the eyes of the vast majority of people, another label with Toyota should be hybrid.
As the industry often says, there are only two kinds of hybrids in the world, one is Toyota, one is the other, although it is slightly biased, but behind this sentence, it reflects Toyota's status and strength in the hybrid technology community.
When such a brand begins to choose to fully embrace BEV, what kind of chemical reaction can it produce?
Recently, with the official release of Lexus' new pure electric vehicle RZ, it means that after Toyota bZ4X and Subaru Soltera, toyota's first wave of weapons carefully prepared in the field of pure electric vehicles has officially released the "end" and is about to usher in the test of the market.
Toyota's pure electric ambitions
For Toyota, the attitude towards BEV has gone from being impossible to doing it to having to do it in just a few years.
It all started with a press conference at the end of last year. In December last year, Toyota Motor announced that it would invest a total of 8 trillion yen (about 406.4 billion yuan) in the research and development of technologies and equipment for electrified models such as pure electric, hybrid and fuel cells, of which half, or 4 trillion yen (about 203.2 billion yuan), will be used in the field of pure electric power.
In terms of models, Toyota directly "retaliated" at the press conference to show 16 pure electric new cars, and announced that by 2030, 30 pure electric vehicles will be introduced, and the global annual sales plan will reach 3.5 million, of which 5 bZ pure electric exclusive series models will be introduced into the Chinese market.
After such a plan was announced, a Toyota "BEV" storm also began to sweep.
In fact, the Japanese camp represented by Toyota has always been in a state of less cold in its attitude towards the development of pure electric vehicles, and the reasons are naturally multifaceted, but among them, the hybrid sells too well, which is undoubtedly one of the main reasons.
As the best brand in the marketization of hybrid technology, Toyota has a high degree of achievement in the electrification transformation of fuel vehicles, but also accumulated a considerable scale, statistics show that Toyota THS hybrid products since its launch, the global cumulative sales of more than 20 million vehicles.
Compared with other car companies, there is an urgent need for BEV models to achieve curve overtaking, or to meet the compliance issues at the policy level. With its earlier layout of hybrid hybridization, Toyota has avoided this early rough wave of new energy development, saving a lot of energy and funds.
But why is Toyota suddenly turning around and choosing to vigorously develop BEVs? Perhaps it was an unprecedented sense of crisis that made Toyota realize that THE BEV had reached a stage where it had to be done.
From the perspective of energy conservation and emission reduction, THS as an excellent technology, naturally there is no need to say, but now the passenger car market pattern has quietly changed, China as the world's largest single car market, can be called the global automobile market trend of the weather vane, from the domestic passenger car new sales of new energy vehicles and fuel vehicles in the proportion of new energy vehicles, new energy vehicles are swallowing the market share of fuel vehicles at an unprecedented speed.
On the other hand, from the overall development rhythm of the new energy vehicle market, the speed of technical upgrading of battery motor electronic control has shown a slowing trend, the vehicle level, including the mileage and other indicators are no longer growing rapidly, coupled with the rapid rise in costs including battery raw materials, it can be said that today's new energy vehicles have left the stage of rough development and come to the stage of high-quality development.
Toyota had to strike.
RZ debuts, Toyota BEV strongest voice?
Recently, Lexus officially released the RZ450 based on the new BEV model, the debut of this new car, representing the first batch of pure electric products based on the e-TNGA architecture after toyota bZ4X and Subaru Soltera, all put on the market.
Among them, RZ450 is undoubtedly the highest positioning model, if the previous bZ4X, let many people think that Toyota's achievements in the field of pure electric is not deep, then the emergence of RZ450, let us see the full version of the bZ4X real appearance, which is also the strongest sound of Toyota BEV.
From the appearance point of view, RZ450 can clearly see that there is a blood relationship with bZ4X, but the shape is still large enough to achieve a large difference, and under the blessing of the family appearance, RZ450 has enough recognition and uniqueness.
Compared to the form factor, the RZ450 shows the true strength of the e-TNGA in a number of configurations and indicators.
On the Toyota standard bZ4X, the 150kW of the front-drive version, or the 80kW power combination of the four-wheel drive version before and after, makes it difficult for many people to accept Toyota's smallness, and in the power combination of the RZ450, we see that it is the first 150kW, the rear 80kW motor combination, but the battery capacity is basically the same as the bZ4X, and the WLTP lasts more than 400 kilometers.
Needless to say, in the case of enough money, many slots on the bZ4X have suddenly been eradicated, such as including the dual combination of instrument screen + HUD, the active safety configuration of pulling full, the glass roof that can actively become frosted glass to reduce the light, and even if it is just a unique style of door mood light.
In a sense, the RZ450 is the full version of this wave of BEVs, and the others are castrated versions.
It can be seen that in Toyota's mind, the difference in specifications brought about by the difference in model level and market positioning is still bright and difficult to overstep.
From this dimension, Toyota's knife technique is undoubtedly a test of the upper limit of a car, if the upper limit is high enough, even if the castration of several rounds still has a good competitiveness, but if the upper limit is not high, the problem will be very large.